Review: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

Posted on April 30, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A chilling twist on the “cursed film” genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World.

In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.

The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.

The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions — demons of the past be damned.

But at what cost? 

Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful twist on the “cursed film” that breathlessly builds to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.

Review:

Paul Tremblay has been producing novels at a steady rate, releasing a new book almost every year. His latest Horror Movie is about a guy who was in a horror movie in college, a horror movie that was lost after an accident on the set, a horror movie that has become an obsession with horror fans and convention goers, a horror movie that is getting remade using as much of the screenplay as possible. Half of this novel is the narrator, who played “The Thin Boy”, as the only survivor left, living the best he can while getting calls to appear at conventions, and meet with producers and directors to make the new version of Horror Movie. The other half is the script to the original Horror Movie. As the novel progresses, the story starts to blend, and we learn what happened to make the original Horror Movie film be considered lost film, how fans think it is cursed, and what really happened to make everyone think this way.

The story is entertaining, the characters are interesting, and I really like the mechanics of the story, which is really about the mechanics of filmmaking. There is the whole mystic behind the “magic of moviemaking” because most of the time, watching a good movie then watching how difficult it was to film is the equivalent to learning how sausage is made. Unfortunately we do not want to believe that many movies are a nightmare to film. We want to think that making films is a wonderful process without difficulty, but the truth is that this rarely ever happens. In the case of Horror Movie, the original movie is shot with several problems, and it is no surprise that only pieces of the movie that even exist are a few clips uploaded to YouTube and a leaked script. Trembley tries to pulls us away from being readers of a novel to being fans of a lost film that we too hope is successful on the second filming. 


Horror Movie is a good novel but it kind of feels like the end is actually the beginning. When the final pages are over, this is a good place to really start the novel, that there is so much more now that could happen. This is not the feeling of “I want more” as much as the feeling that this story is incomplete, that the entire novel is the origin story of “The Thin Boy” and not the whole story at all. As it stands, the way that this novel ends undermines all of the buildup and weakens the entire story. The ending really lowered the experience of the story, and this is unfortunate because I did like the journey.

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Review: The Antidote by Karen Russell

Posted on April 27, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell’s novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.

Review:

Like everything I have read by Karen Russell, The Antidote is a difficult book to review. The story intertwines five characters, with three-ish narrators (there are a few more, but there are three main narrators) set in a Nebraska town where people are leaving at an alarming rate due to the failure of their crops and farms. With the real life devastation of loss and failure as the backdrop, Russell writes a story filled with superstition, magical realism, and hope. One of the main characters, known as the Antidote, is a “Prairie Witch” or “Vault”, a person who for a small fee will hold onto your worst memories and secrets so that you can live a happy life. She encounters a young girl, Dell, who has lost her mother and is living with her uncle Harp, who’s farm is the only one where crops seem to be thriving under the watchful eye of a sentient scarecrow. Added to this is a serial killer, The Lucky Rabbit Foot Killer going through Nebraska killing women, crooked cops, and a black photographer, Cleo, who has been sent to Nebraska to be a photographer for FDR, but whose camera is taking photographs of the horrible history of the region. The Antidote is a deeply unsettling yet wonderfully beautiful novel that is not easily forgotten.

This is not a quick read. This is not a novel that you can just zip through and go onto the next thing. Karen Russell writes books that demand your attention, that need to be absorbed. Stories that will sink into you and make you think about them for hours when you are not reading. The density of her writing is one of those aspects that can be appreciated because the story is supposed to be heavy, the situation the characters find themselves in is difficult, and the deep sadness of loss and everything that you own being destroyed is something that can be felt in the pages of The Antidote, like the hurt that the characters experience is real. And some of the story is real. The story of The Antidote is told against the backdrop of a drought in Nebraska, with dust storms killing crops and everyone starving to death. The buffaloes have been slaughtered, and the Native Americans have been pushed off the land. The violence and blood have soaked into the land, and this story is the result of this history. The real history and the magic that Russell adds makes a story that is immersive and heartbreaking.

Karen Russell’s writing is hard to review because it is nearly perfect. This is one of the few novels I have read in a long time where I just want to write “No notes.” Russell has written another novel where there is not much that can be said about it besides praise. Though it is not an easy read, it is an important read because Russell is writing the new American classics. 

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

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Review: The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

Posted on April 18, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

When Phyl, a young literature graduate, moves back home with her parents, she soon finds herself frustrated by the narrow horizons of English country life. As for her plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. But the chance discovery of a forgotten novelist from the 1980s stirs her into action, as does a visit from her uncle Chris – especially when he tells her that he’s working on a political story that might put his life in danger.

Chris has been following the careers of a group of students, all present at Cambridge University in the 1980s, now members of a think-tank which has been quietly pushing the British government towards extremism. And now, after years in the political wilderness, they might be in a position to put their ideas into action.

As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a mysterious conference taking place deep in the Cotswolds. When Phyl hears that one of the delegates has been murdered, she begins to wonder if real life is starting to merge with the novel she’s been trying to write. But does the explanation really lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?

Darting between decades and genres, THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE reimagines the coming-of-age story, the cosy crime caper and the state-of-the-nation novel with Coe’s trademark humour and warmth. From one of Britain’s finest living novelists, this is a witty, razor-sharp novel which explores how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

Review:

When I started The Proof of My Innocence, I did not know how much I was going to enjoy every aspect of the story. The novel starts with a long prologue, with Phyl living with her parents at a vicarage after finishing college, working at the Japanese restaurant in the airport, coming home to watch episodes of Friends as a comfort, and trying to figure out her next step in life. One of her mother’s friends from college, Christopher Swann, stops to visit on the way to a convention of conservative leaders as material for his liberal blog. Phyl starts to read his blog and even though it is not a topic she finds very interesting, she feels like she can write too. She makes a list of the types of novels that are popular and/or books she likes to read. The list consists of three subgenres: Cozy Crime, Dark Academia, and Autofiction. The rest of the novel is set into three parts. The first part is a crime section, where Christopher ends up dead at the conference and the older detective close to retirement is trying to solve the crime. The second is a slim autobiography of a friend of Chris and Phyl’s mother from Cambridge, and how there were some strange things going on at the campus. The third section is in the voice of Phyl and Chris’s adopted daughter Rashida as they travel around Europe trying to find more clues to the death of Chris. The three parts are written in the style of the subgenres that Phyl writes at the beginning of the novel, and they are distinctive and have their own rewards.

The entire novel also has a backdrop of a tumultuous political climate. England has a new Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth passes away, and the Conservative government is changing things for the perceivable worst. This does not make much difference in the plot except that it is a device that adds another layer of turmoil to the world that the characters are trying to navigate, and it gives a good reason for someone who writes criticism against the conservative party to wind up dead at a convention for the conservative party. Even if this might be seen as a warning to some readers (especially in this moment in history when reading and art are an escape for what is happening at a government level), there are so many other elements to the novel that makes it worth reading. The Proof of My Innocence is a parallel story of trying to find your voice in a post college world, trying to find a place in a government system that you really do not fit into, and a crime novel poking fun at crime novels and literary cliches by making puns and even delving into pop culture theories like why many people stream episodes of Friends for comfort. Even the title of the novel is a play on words. This playfulness with tone and voice in a story about murder and shady politics is what makes The Proof of My Innocence a novel that I will remember and want to reread simply to catch the nuances I definitely missed the first time. 


I received The Proof of My Innocence as an ARC from Europa Editions in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: The Houseguest by Thomas Berger

Posted on April 2, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon

Synopsis:

Chuck Burgoyne is no ordinary houseguest. The Graveses (father Doug; wife Audrey; son Bobby; and daughter-in-law Lydia) have gotten used to his polite manners and gourmet breakfasts. But one morning at the Graveses’ summer home, Chuck fails to appear.

When Chuck finally does surface, he is no longer sweet and charming, but rather has become aggressive and arrogant, abusing each family member in turn. Each family member that is, except the fellow outsider, Lydia. Once Chuck rescues her from the dangerous undertow of the ocean, Lydia can’t help but feel obligated to him, even after his uninvited advances to her while she’s half asleep. Slowly it becomes apparent to the family that Chuck isn’t anyone’s guest but rather a perfect stranger who wormed his way into their home. Yet the Graveses are so concerned with not offending him by being impolite that they willingly accept the abuse he freely dishes out. In private, however, they all scheme for his undoing. But will anyone muster up the courage?

An eerie and clever novel, The Houseguest introduces one of Berger’s most dangerous and compelling villains.

Review:

“The process that led to the decision to kill Chuck Burgoyne, who for the first week of his visit had proved the perfect houseguest, began on the Sunday when, though he had promised to prepare breakfast for all (he was a superb cook), he had not yet appeared in the kitchen by half past noon.” ~ p. 3

This is the first sentence of The Houseguest, the 1988 novel by Thomas Berger. The novel is about Chuck Burgoyne being the houseguest of the Graveses family, Doug, his wife Audrey, his son Bob and Bob’s wife Lydia. All four of them love Chuck but he quickly grows out of favor with them, and the family starts to accuse one another of letting this person into the house as their guest. Only to find out that none of them invited him.

The core of this novel is a home invasion story, one of the most frightening horror/thriller subgenres because a stranger breaking into our home and uprooting our lives is a total breakdown of our safe space. The whole world is dangerous when your home is in danger. The Graveses home is a vacation home on an island, and this creates a different type of danger. They are away from their real lives and can feel the isolation. There is no escape from the danger that Chuck Burgoyne represents, and he uses this as one of his advantages. This is also a social satire about the Graveses who have more money and privilege than sense. They feel like they can get away with whatever they want because they have money, this vacation house on an island ran by pretty much one family, The Finches, who do all of the cleaning, the taxi service, own the grocery store, and are law enforcement. Doug Graves is a lawyer and habitual adulterer that women are not safe to be around, even forcing himself on some of his son’s girlfriends when everyone was underage. His wife Audrey is sad, angry, and an alcoholic, mostly because she hates her husband and the life that she lives. Their son Bobby is an idiot, and Lydia does not know where she fits into this family. They all see themselves as better than the Finches and the island, and Chuck uses all of their arrogance against them. They think that they have the upper hand because this is their home, they are privileged, and they do not the sense to feel otherwise. As the book progresses, so do their schemes to kill Chuck, and each one is more ludicrous than the last. In the end the satire comes full circle.


The other thing that can be said about this novel, which can be noticed just from the first sentence, is that Thomas Berger’s writing is intricate and interesting. There are many things to unpack in this one sentence as well as every sentence. Berger writes a slim novel, but there are so many events that are explored, so much of the family history and character development unravels in a single sentence. This can be off-putting to some readers because this is not a style used very often. Periodically reading a book written with this much richness in every line is impressive. Even though the story does fall short in many aspects because there is not a single character that you want to win in the fight between the houseguest and the family, The Houseguest is an interesting read, if only for how it is written and how the story unfolds.

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Review: When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Posted on March 30, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain comes an entirely serious take on a distinctly unserious subject: what would really happen if suddenly the moon were replaced by a giant wheel of cheese.

It’s a whole new moooooon.

One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters — schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians — as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.

Review:

In the end notes of When the Moon Hits Your Eye, John Scalzi states that this novel is the third in a trilogy of novels based on theme: ordinary people being thrust into extraordinary situations. The first two in the trilogy The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain are both excellent stories that explore different aspects of this idea. I did not start this novel with this in mind. I started it because it is the new John Scalzi book. I cracked the book only knowing the simplest part of the premise: The moon has turned into cheese.

The novel does not read as a novel as much as a collection of stories around the reactions of the moon just one day turning into cheese (well a cheese like substance. NASA will not commit to calling it cheese). With each chapter being a day in the lunar cycle, it shows this singular event through the eyes of people all over America, from NASA scientists and astronauts, to politicians and billionaires, to regular people like preachers and Reddit users who do know know whether or not this is a hoax. The novel starts without much direction, but halfway through, an event on the cheese moon brings an impending doom to Earth. From this point forward, the people in Scalzi’s novel change their focus. We spend every new chapter and every day with characters who are living with the knowledge that their imminent death is coming. Their actions and reactions become more humane, more focused on coming together to show that friends, family, and love are more important than all of the other things that generally distract us. There are moments in When the Moon Hits Your Eye that display honest emotions and heart. 

When I am reading or writing, I always think about two principles of the stories that I like to read and tell. The first is “No story is perfect, but it has to be told well.” The second is “Never take yourself too seriously.” John Scalzi’s novels are great examples of these two ideas. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is not a perfect novel, nor does it pretend to be. There is a chapter toward the end of the novel that actual explores this idea and says the same thing. When you try to be perfect, you pull all of the life out of the story. The second, not taking himself too seriously? He has written a novel about the moon turning into cheese and uses pretty much any cheese pun he can think of. He puts easter eggs throughout the novel (including a law firm with the names of the history of bass players in Metallica), but he does his best to balance the silliness with an actually readable and heartfelt story. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is not his best novel, and it is definitely not perfect, but it is enjoyable because it does not try to be serious at all. 

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

Reviews of other John Scalzi novels:

The Kaiju Preservation Society

Starter Villain

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Review: Starlet by Danger Slater

Posted on March 27, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Ghoulish, Bookshop

Synopsis:

FAME. FORTUNE. JELLYFISH.

When an aspiring young actress accepts an invite to a fading A-lister’s home, she soon learns the terrifying secrets of the Hollywood Elite.

Review:

I was catching up on episodes of the This Is Horror podcast, and toward the end of last year, Danger Slater was a guest. In his interview, he talks about his books, his life, and trying every type of Kit Kat bar. By the end of this interview, I had bought both Starlet and Moonfellows. Earlier this week I read Starlet in one sitting, and I immediately knew that Danger Slater is an author that I now have need to read everything he writes.

Starlet stars with Deja Seawright, an aspiring Hollywood actress from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, struggling to get jobs but continuing to audition every day. She runs into Brandon Bowers at pizza place. He was once a famous A list actor who had started to fade a long time ago. Brandon and Deja start a texting relationship while he is filming on location, and on his first night back in Los Angeles, she is invited over for what might the last night of her life.

Danger Slater has written a body horror novel that is funny, fast paced, and entertaining. At the core of the story are the tropes of the girl who is trying to make it to stardom and the actor who will do anything to stay relevant, but his telling is so far removed from what other authors would do with the same prompt that it almost feels like he is the first person to write about this. One of the things that makes this work the most is that Slater never takes the story or the writing too seriously. He uses jokes and weirdness throughout so that when the real jokes and weirdness happens, we are already conditioned to believe them. This causes Starlet to be a success even when it could be the most bonkers story that I read this year.

Starlet is inspired by the allegations against Armie Hammer, but Slater goes far beyond the cannibalism fantasies that Hammer was accused of sharing in Instagram DMs. Slater uses this only as the genesis of the idea, and the things that Brandon Bowers does makes Hammer’s ideas seem almost normal. I enjoyed this novella from beginning to end, and all of the twists and turns made sense in a nonsensical way, proof that Danger Slater knows how to come up with a crazy story and execute it in a way that makes it all believable. 

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Review: The Colony by Annika Norlin

Posted on March 24, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A mega best-seller in Sweden, with rights sold to over a dozen countries and a TV adaptation underway, Annika Norlin’s debut novel The Colony is the biggest Swedish literary phenomenon since Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove.  

Winner of the Vi Literature Award and Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize, two of Sweden’s biggest literary awards, The Colony is a gripping portrayal of contemporary society and its alternatives. 

Burnt-out from a demanding job and a bustling life in the city, Emelie has left town to spend a few days in the country. Once there, in the peaceful, verdant hills, down by the river she encounters a mysterious group of seven people, each with personal stories full of pain, alienation, and the longing to live differently. They are misfits, each in their own way, and all led by the enigmatic and charismatic Sara. 

How did they end up there? Are they content with the rigid roles they’ve been assigned? And what happens when an outsider appears and is initially drawn to their alternative lifestyle but cannot help but stir things up? 

A masterful blend of humor, emotion, unforgettable characters, and sharp social commentary, The Colony is a magnetic and deeply touching story about love, community, and the unfathomable power we other others and that others have over us. 

Review:

The Colony is the debut novel by songwriter and artist Anika Norlin. This is her first novel, originally published in Sweden in 2023 and going on to win the Vi Literature Award and Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize. The English translation by Alice E. Olsson is published by Europa Editions. 

The story starts with Emile, burned out with living in the city and her job. She learns that camping and being in nature is more appealing than sleeping in an apartment and answering her phone. Before long, she spends more and more time in the woods and less time answering the queries of those worried about her. While in the woods, she starts to observe a group of people who seem to be living in the woods as well. This group are doing strange things like singing and dancing to no music, saying “Thank you” to every fish they catch and eat, and spending long times not saying a single word to one another. She watches them for a while and is particularly interested in the youngest one, a teenager whom she dubs “Poor Bastard” because of the way that he is part of the group but not exactly included. Eventually she runs into “Poor Bastard” and grow a friendship. This friendship turns into meeting the whole group, having dinner, drinking moonshine, and being part of the colony. The novel is long, over 400 pages, and a great deal of the time is going through the histories of the members of the community, but the whole time, I was engrossed in the story and wanted to keep reading. 

I read this novel faster than I expected. Even though there seems to only be a small amount of things happening in the real story, the development of the characters and the stories of how they came together and why they choose to live away from society are all compelling. We are able to make sense as to why someone would want to live in this group, away from society, being almost completely self-reliant. If this twenty-first century argument on whether or not living in a city with an apartment or the internet is better or living in the country where you do not see anyone for months at a time but you can live off of the land and ignore the poison that society brings, then Annika Norlin shows the pros and cons to both in an even handed way. There is not once where we feel like any of these characters are making the wrong decisions, even when they are not always the most beneficial. The crux of the biggest argument in the novel comes with Låke or “Poor Bastard”, the teenager who had grown up in the Colony and what they owe him as far as education and interaction with people his own age. 

The Colony is an interesting study in societies, not only the society outside of the group but the social constructs that happen within any group of people. Even though they say they are all equal, everyone still plays different roles within the smaller society. The Colony is just another society that has those with more and less influence. We are treated to an deep exploration of this concept, and Annika Norlin has written a compelling study on how even when bigger social constructs are left behind, a new social constructs with organically appear.

I have received an ARC of The Colony from Europa Editions in exchange for an honest review. 

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Review: Crash by J.G. Ballard

Posted on March 21, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

In Ballard’s hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a “TV scientist” turned “nightmare angel of the highways,” experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an intentionally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor. A classic work of cutting edge fiction, Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society’s increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.

Review:

I have wanted to read Crash by J.G. Ballard for a long time. Since seeing the David Cronenberg film in the late 90s, I have been looking for a copy of the novel. It is not one that I wanted to buy online or in a digital format. I wanted to find a physical copy in a physical bookstore. I found a new copy late last summer, and I tried to start reading it right off. After three restarts, I finally was able to get through the short novel. My copy is now beat up, with covers creased, pages folded and torn, aged from being in the trunk of my car, and now it is much more distressed that normal. For some reason, the more beat up became, the more I felt like it is how any copy of Crash should appear. 

Crash starts with the narrator, James Ballard in a car wreck where he kills the husband of a doctor. During this event, he meets Vaughan, a strange man who chases car crashes to take photos of them. He also recreates historic car crashes and is completely sexually aroused by crashes, injuries, and deaths. Shortly after meeting Ballard, they become friends looking for crashes and sexual partners. They drive around, getting prostitutes at the airport, sharing partners and each other, while planning the greatest car crash of all time, the one that will kill Elizabeth Taylor. 

When Ballard (the character) gets into a wreck that actually kills someone, he becomes a member of this group who find car crashes erotic. This could be because he is face to face with death, not his own but one he causes, and with the help of Vaughan and his small group of friends, this horror turns into something that he finds as a catalyst to a new life of cars and sexual obsession. The thing that could have been better, to make this more appealing, is to have Ballard as someone who is not already having extramarital affairs, who did not already seem like he was obsessed with sex. He is in the car crash on the way home from seeing his secretary, with whom he had been having an affair for a long time. He also knows that his wife is having affairs. If they were more of monogamous before the crash, and then Vaughan got him (and his wife) into the lifestyle that they ultimately finds, I would be more interested in what happens to Ballard. In the end, Ballard is not very different than he was before his crash, except that he and his wife are more honest about taking other lovers, and this makes me not really care much for what happens to him. He is not the most interesting character because we have Vaughan, the scarred and deranged man who has started this group of car crash lovers, but there is not enough backstory on him except he used to be handsome and famous until a car crash scarred him and now he was doing this, hanging around crashes, getting chased off by the police, and being a nuisance. We do not learn enough about him because Ballad (the character) is more interested in having sex with everyone than in finding out why he is acting the way that he is acting.


I understand the point of this novel. I know that it is about the glamorization of violence and the way society likes to obsess about tragedy, to the point where it is almost a sexual obsession. It may not be car crashes, but we definitely have an attraction to crime and criminals, especially if they are attractive. Ballard (the novelist) turns this into a over the top reaction, one where the characters cannot see a car crash with having orgasm, and need more and more. In the end, I am glad that I read this, but it is probably not a book I will read again. To put it bluntly, Ballard (the character) is not someone who can see anything passed his penis, and so this really puts a damper on the way that Crash develops and the impact that is could have made.

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Review: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

Posted on March 7, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Bookshop, Amazon

Synopsis:

Hungerstone is a thrillingly seductive sapphic romance for fans of S.T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood and Emilia Hart’s Weyward.

For what do you hunger, Lenore?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage, the relationship has soured and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry’s ambitions take them out of London and to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside, where Henry aims to host a hunt with society’s finest. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband hunted, and though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

The preparations for the event take a turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore’s life. Carmilla who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night; Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger.

Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and Carmilla’s ever-growing presence, Lenore begins to unravel her past and in doing so, uncovers a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the moors and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution, Hungerstone is a compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla, the book that inspired Dracula: a captivating story of appetite and desire.

Review:

Lenora is an orphan raised by her aunt until she marries steel baron, Henry. After they get married, Henry buys a crumbling estate and moves them from London to Nethershaw manor. On their way to the manor, they ride up on a wrecked carriage and a ghostly woman, Carmilla, distraught from the wreck and in need of time at the manor to mend. What they do not expect is that Carmilla is going to change Lenora’s outlook, open her eyes to the state of her life, and give her the strength to do something about it.

The novel starts with the expected pace of a gothic novel. We expect them to be a little slow and broody, foggy and mucky. and filled with mold and isolation. Nethershaw manor is in complete disrepair, and it is up to Lenora to get it into shape before Henry hosted an influential list of visitors for a hunting party. The first half of the novel is rife with the stress of getting the house put together, but also learning about Henry and how he might not be the person that she thought she was marrying. This is a pretty typical of a gothic novel: someone marries into a situation where she did not know what she is getting into. 

The wildcard with Hungerstone is Carmilla. She comes and goes as she pleases, and things start to happen to the women in the neighboring village to the Nethershaw. Lenora gives her attention because she is stressed and lonely. Carmilla is interesting and a mystery, and before long Lernora’s feelings for her cannot be ignored. The attention Carmilla gives her is eventually enough to allow Lenora to figure out what is going on in her marriage and her life. In the end, Carmilla could be anything. She could be a ghost. She could be a vampire. She could be a manifestation brought on by Lenora. The final truth is that Carmilla is the catalyst to the changing in Lenora and her life. 

The first two thirds of Hungerstone are slow and moody, and when the action does start to speed up toward the last third, there are some pacing issues. The truth is coming out, the consequences are happening, and the house of Nethershaw is about to crumble down, but Kat Dunn stops the momentum a few times for more flashbacks that are unnecessary. This kills the momentum, and an ending that could have felt like a carriage flying off of a cliff becomes very controlled. This does not stop Hungerstone from being a novel I would recommend, but I wish that the final third of the novel was structured a little more reckless.


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

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Review: The Witcher The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

Posted on January 24, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Geralt the Witcher—revered and hated—is a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent.

But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good… and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

Review:

Andrezej Sapkowski published the first Witcher book The Last Wish in 1993. Since then, he has written eight Witcher books, comics, a video game series (with The Witcher 3 being one of the best games in recent years), a Netflix series that has three seasons, and an animated movie. The property is still expanding and it does not seem to be slowing down. The premise is pretty simple. Geralt of Rivia is a witcher, someone who slays monsters with a combination of fighting training, magical powers, and vials of elixirs. He travels the countryside to slay monsters and solve problems for people for a bounty. He is not respected for the job he does, and many times as soon as his job is finished, he is ran out of the village. 

The overall premise of the Witcher series is pretty simple, but the Witcher series draws people in because of the mix of fantasy, swords and sorcery, action and adventure. The first book, The Last Wish, is a pretty simple introduction to Geralt and the lifestyle that he lives. The book is an anthology of Witcher adventures, each of the stories putting him in different scenarios where he has to use his skills and logic. Up until the last story, Geralt is portrayed as someone a little cold, a person who does not have much interest in getting tangled with the people whom he works for, that the missions are mostly for money and nothing more. He also seems confident and wise in everything that he does. He has enough sense to not get himself into any sort of real trouble, but if he is in trouble he has enough wits to escape. The last story, “The Last Wish”, seems to turn this on it’s head a bit. In this story, he and his bard friend Dandelion are fishing when they pull up a bottle with a djinn inside that quickly hurts Dandelion. Geralt takes him to a village where Yennefer, a powerful witch, is being tolerated. The interactions between Yennefer and Geralt shows a different side of Geralt. Instead of the confident monster slayer, he is exposed as a person bumbling through things and living more on luck than on talent. In this story our perspective on the Witcher changes, and I think this is Sapkowski still trying to figure out who Geralt is.


This definitely reads like a first book in a series, and there is definitely some growth between the first story and the last story. Not only in the writing but in the storytelling. As the book progresses, the stories get better, and you get a sense that The Last Wish includes some of the earlier ideas of what the Witcher will become, and he is figuring it out while he is writing the story. It is not the best book, but it is a book that shows promise in the series getting better.

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