Review: Death in the Downline by Maria Abrams

Posted on January 14, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

It’s multi-level murder in this darkly funny mystery novel about the glamorous world of MLM “huns”—and the dangerous secrets at the top of the pyramid.

Drew thought she was destined to rise above her small New Jersey hometown and make it as a serious journalist in New York City. But now she’s back in Clearfield, pushing thirty, newly single, and living with her father.

After a chance encounter at the grocery store, she reconnects with her former best friend, Steph, who married young and never left their hometown. But Steph looks . . . good. She’s tanned, clear skinned, and glowing. She drives an expensive car and wears only name brands. What’s her secret? A multi-level marketing scheme called LuminUS that’s taken the ladies of Clearfield by storm. With nothing left to lose, Drew gets sucked into this glamorous world of downlines, sales parties, and girls’ trips.

But when a LuminUS distributor dies under mysterious circumstances, can Drew uncover the dark secret at the heart of the organization—and save her best friend—before it’s too late?

Laugh-out-loud funny and a pitch-perfect skewering of pyramid schemes, Death in the Downline is a page-turner that will have readers nodding in recognition and cheering for Drew until the cathartic conclusion.

Review:

I have been a fan of Maria Abrams since her first novella, She Who Rules the Dead, was published by Weirdpunk Books. When I learned through her Instagram that she is releasing her new novel through Quirk Books, I preordered it before I was offered an ARC through NetGalley. I could not have been more excited to get the ARC and read it in less than two days.

The novel centers around Drew, a woman down on her luck. She just broke up with her boyfriend, lost her job at Buzzfeed due to budget cuts, and is now returning from New York back to her childhood home in Clearfield to live with her father. She has no money, and even though she applies for jobs on her phone all of the time, she has no prospects. One day she is shopping at the store when she runs into Sarah, her high school friend, whom she had lost touch with in college. Sarah seems to have the perfect life, marriage, kids and money. Sarah has convinced Drew to join LuminUS, a multilevel marketing company selling beauty supplements. Before long, Drew spends money she does not have and is trying to keep up with the selling strategies set by Sarah and those up the chain of command. She is not the type of person who completely buys into the business of LuminUS, and it does not take long for her to question the entire company. The women dying around her does not help.

Death in the Downline is a fast paced, fun book. Drew is an empathetic character, and we are on her side the entire time, having the same questions that she has. While Drew starts to investigate the deaths around LuminUS, she does not really have a hard time getting information. We also do not get much sense of risk in Drew poking around in shady dealings of a multimillion dollar business. I feel like this lack of peril that Drew feels, like there will be nobody to kill her even though they are killing those around her, makes the novel, especially the latter third where she is really getting information and pushing for more, feel soft. Most of the people involved want to talk to her, tell her everything going on, even if they know that they are in danger as well for telling their story. Drew getting information seems a little easy, and this keeps the final scenes from being too tense. I enjoyed Death in the Downline, and I had a good time reading it. Getting into the world of MLM and knowing that none of them really are anything more than ploys to milk desperate people from their money, is an interesting topic to think about. I like Drew and Sarah as friends, and even some of the other ladies selling LuminUS are good people in a bad situation. In the end, the fall of LuminUS does not cause enough danger for Drew, the biggest whistleblower.  

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

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Review: North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud

Posted on January 11, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Nathan Ballingrud’s Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud’s intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.

These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.

Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story “The Monsters of Heaven” won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.

Review:

Short stories are a much different reading experience than novels and novellas. In a short story, the author only has a few pages to build the world, the characters, and the conflict before either the story ends or people lose interest and move on to the next story. Each short story should be designed to stand alone, even if it is part of a collection of linked stories that tell a bigger story. Short stories are only a moment in time, and this time needs to be used wisely. In a collection like North American Lake Monsters, these characters are each put in a time where they are dealing with a difficult situation, whether financially, romantically, emotionally, or morally, and the collection is filled with every type of monster.

Many of these ten stories have the same type of main character– a person who is struggling at the moment with being a decent human being. This is not to say they have not been decent at some point, just not at the moment. Many of them are abusive to their partners and children, some are racist, and all of them are dealing with the grief of being at a low point in their lives. All of these stories add some sort of new element to these feelings, whether it is a feeling of hope or even deeper despair. This stands out all of these stories, but a few of the stronger examples are “Wild Acre”, “The Monsters From Heaven,” and “The Way Station.” “Wide Acre” starts with a bankrupt building contractor witnessing his friends getting attacked by a monster. He runs away, and by being the lone survivor, his depression pushes everyone away from him, and he eventually loses control. In “The Monsters from Heaven” a father is struggling with being the parent responsible for his son disappearance. His wife has animosity, and the only thing that helps them get over this loss is nursing an injured alien back to health to treat as their son. “The Way Station” is about the grief of a homeless man who is displaced by Hurricane Katrina, finds himself in Florida looking for his adult daughter, and waking up with a literal hole in his chest shaped like his memories from New Orleans. 

None of the characters in these stories are very good people. The men fight with their wives and call them names. The women are sick of their lives, their husbands and children, and are trying to find an escape. One of the stories, “S.S.” is about a young kid who is blatantly racist and is getting introduced to a white supremacy group by a girl he has a crush on. Nathan Ballingrud does not shy away from controversial language in this or any of his other stories, and in the end, it is obvious that his world is filled with monsters, but the most dangerous monsters are the humans. This theme is reflected in every single story, and it creates a collection of stories that is sometimes hard to read.

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Review: Playworld by Adam Ross

Posted on January 7, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A big and big-hearted novel—one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Peanut (“A brilliant, powerful, and memorable book” —The New York Times)

“In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.”

Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York’s elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he’s teetering on the edge of collapse.

Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren—Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi’s Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm.

Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era—with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age’s excesses—and who seem to care little about what their children are up to—Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.

Review:

When I was given the opportunity by the publisher to recieve an ARC of Playworld by Adam Ross for an honest review, I jumped at the opportunity. The name Adam Ross reminded me of the joy of reading Mr. Peanut when it came out in 2010, and I could not wait to dive into Playworld. The synopsis is interesting, if not a little disturbing. The story follows Griffin Hurt, a fourteen year old who has an affair with his mother’s friend, Naomi. She is thirty-six with two kids and a rich husband. His own father is struggling to make it as an actor, singer, and teacher, while Griffin lucks into a starring role in a television show, The Nuclear Family, as well as multiple film offers. Griffin struggles to balance acting, school work, wrestling, friends, and his budding interest in girls. 

Close to the end of the novel, Griffin says that he is spending his life swimming in an ocean that is made by adults. There are things that he does, things that he is exposed to, things that he is unaware of that get thrown onto him, and when he reacts slow or surprised, the adults around him have poor reactions. Not only do his mother and father do this, while battling their own demons of infidelity and the prospect that their fourteen year old son is already outpacing their success, but the poor reactions to his behavior by his school teachers, his acting costars, his wrestling coach, and even his friends’ parents. He wants so much to understand the world around him, yet the world does not seem to have easy access for him. People see him has a grown adult when he is still a hormone driven kid. He is successful, paying for his own private school, and in demand. His father looks at him like a peer and as the promise that he could not fulfill. His brother looks at him like the golden child who can do no wrong. His mother see him as an extension of his father, and Naomi, the grown woman who wants to have an affair with him, sees him as someone who can fulfill the desire she is not receiving in her marriage. The adults in his life see him as the solution to something they are missing in their lives, and Griffin struggles to do the things that he loves versus the things that are expected of him. This draws him inward, makes him introspective and lonely in a city where possibilities are endless, where friendships come and go, and where Griffin is trying to figure out what is best for him. 

The backdrop of this novel is the end of the Carter Administration and beginning of the Reagan Administration. This change of president, along with other events happening in this time, like everyone getting up early to watch Princess Diana and Prince Charles wedding, the shooting of John Lennon, the FAA strike, and the Iran hostage crisis, not only serve as markers in the year, but heightens the feelings that Griffin is going through. Looking back at this time frame with thirty years of hindsight, the narrative of these events can be shaped to fit Griffin’s life but also reflect some of the things that we are experiencing right now.

Adam Ross worked on this semi-biographical novel for over a decade. He has taken time to submerge us into a world where kids are doing whatever they want, with little to no supervision. Griffin drinks at parties and with a fake ID, drives cars, and has affairs with rich women. This freedom does not come with feelings of joy but with a huge burden. Ross spends 500 pages showing us this world, creating it piece by piece, and it does not feel like a place that we can ever leave, like it becomes our burden too. In the end, Ross does an wonderful job giving us a large coming-of-age novel where we are satisfied at the ending even if it seems like Griffin’s life is just beginning. 

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Review: Zola by D.E. McCluskey

Posted on January 3, 2025 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Gordon’s name was a joke.

It was given to him by Anthony Zola, a controlling, and abusive father, to taunt his wife over her love of cheese, and the fact that she had been steadily gaining weight since their marriage.

Andrea was a doting mother, and maybe a little overprotective of her boy, but she didn’t see that as a bad thing.

On discovering a secret, one the child had been told to keep to himself, everything changes. Now she must do whatever she needs to keep her, and her boy, alive.

Needs must.

Gordon is going to find that his love of cheese, handed down to him by his mother, and his love for the only woman in his life, is about to be taken to a whole new level.

From the dark mind of D E McCluskey, author of The Twelve, CRACK, and Cravings, Comes another addition to his limited ‘Extreme Horror Series’.

Zola is about to take you into a whole new level darkness, and depravity.

Review:

I like many different types of horror novel, but I am always looking for horror books that involve things like the mall, the gym, professional wrestling, and food. When I saw that Zola is an extreme horror novel with cheese, I knew that I had to read it. The outcome is that Zola is one of the most disgusting and depraved books that I have ever read.

The story starts with Anthony and Andrea Zola. Anthony is an abusive husband and father, and when Andrea is pregnant with their son, she craves all types of cheese. Anthony thinks this is so funny that he names their son Gordon Zola, as a cruel joke for his wife’s love of cheese. When their son is born, Anthony’s abuse move to both of them. This causes a final showdown between Anthony and Andrea, one in which afterward Andrea does not know how her and her son will survive. They make it by, with their wits, some cannibalism, and a great amount of cheese. The first half of the novella is about the extremes a mother will go to help her child. The second half is what happens when a child is not given the life skills to live on his own. Between the two parts, we get a novella filled with disgusting scenes, horrible muck, and tastes that cannot be masked by the stink of cheese. 

The novella is only for those with a strong stomach. The depravity of these characters meets no boundaries, and some of their ideas for survival are not good ideas at all. In the end, the story is about protecting your child, but sometimes you also need to let them learn on their own. I have no desire to read this novella again, and I probably should take a break from food horror.

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Review Dogs & Wolves by Herve Le Corre

Posted on December 31, 2024 by ghostvillehero

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Amazon Bookshop

Synopsis:

When Franck gets out after five years in jail, he expects to find the brother he protected with his silence. Instead, waiting for him is his brother Fabien’s girlfriend. Jessica takes him to the gloomy country house where she lives with her cantankerous, hard-drinking parents, her eight-year old daughter – who doesn’t speak, hardly eats, and seems to be carrying a secret much bigger than herself – and a large mastiff dog they all seem to fear.  

Time passes, Fabien doesn’t return, and Franck is increasingly mystified by Jessica’s behaviour, seductive at times, hostile at others. Nonetheless, Franck follows her around on her crazy nocturnal rounds until he finds himself with a gun pointed at his head. It’s the beginning of a crescendo of retaliation in a gang war in which Franck believes he is participating, only to realize he’s merely a sacrificial pawn. 

In the scorching heat of the summer, love and violence, sweetness and blood, will result into an unpredictable ending, one that perhaps only the little girl knew from the start.

Review:

Dogs & Wolves, the newest crime novel by Herve Le Corre to be translated by Howard Curtis and published by Europa Editions, is a story about betrayal, secrets, and murder. Franck spent five years in jail for a robbery that he committed with his brother Fabien. When he is released, he is met by Fabien’s girlfriend Jessica, who says that Fabien is on a job in Spain and for him to come stay with her, her parents, and her neglected young daughter. Before long, Franck starts to learn that Jessica is not always honest (or faithful), and it does not take long before Franck is fully involved in her underworld activities. 

This novel is a slow burn, and the story takes much too long to develop. Franck spends a great deal of the novel drinking beer in the heat, spending time with Jessica’s daughter, Rachel, and lusting after Jessica, following her around like a puppy. The deeper we get into the story, the more we see that none of these characters are good people. In fact all of these characters are people you would never want to associate with in real life. The way that they treat one another, throw around sexist and homophobic slurs, and use violence as a way to get their point across, makes it difficult to feel sorry for the fate of any of them. The main character Franck is the worst human of them all, and though their is a small amount of redemption in the way that he cares about Rachel, Jessica’s daughter, this is such a thin veil of humanity that you know Franck does not have a personality that will allow for him to be any sort of role model to the child. Rachel is the only person we feel any sort of sympathy for because she is neglected, abused, and born into a world that is filled with adults that are nothing but horrible people. 

The writing and translation are good even though there is more time spent on feelings and setting than plot. We are brought along with Franck while he waits for his brother. The wait is long and impatient. We wait with him. The days are long and hot, and we can feel the misery Franck is feeling. Dogs & Wolves suffers from a slow pace for a crime novel, with pages and pages of nothing happening. The characters are strongly written, and even though none of them have a redeeming quality, they are definitely written in a way that evokes strong emotion. I was glad when this novel was finished, and I never want to meet these people again. 

I received this novel as an ARC through Europa Editions in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram

Posted on October 22, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke.

Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station.

Determined to find a way out again, he starts to explore the rooms and corridors ahead of him. But no matter how many claustrophobic hallways or vast cathedral-esque rooms he passes through, the exit is nowhere in sight.

The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn’t been trapped there accidentally, and amongst the shadows and concrete, he comes to realise that he almost certainly is not alone.

A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.

Review:

Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram is a slim novella that does many things. The main character Vicken is riding the subway in Montreal on his way to drown himself in the Saint Lawrence River. He has been clinically depressed for years, and this is the day that he is going to end it all. After a quick encounter with a stranger, Felix, Vicken finds himself stuck in an underground station. A station with no exit, no trains coming or going, and no other people. Time, the station, and Vicken’s actions continue to expand and grow, and as the story continues, the things that Vicken encounters get stranger and clarity becomes something that nobody receives. 

Vicken is brought to this place on his last day, on his last journey, but the journey is just starting for him. Arjam writes a novella that really does not have an obvious direction but instead relies on building a feeling of dread and desperation. Vicken is at the end of his rope throughout the whole story, and by the end of the story, we can feel this too. There is a feeling that we kind of hope something (or someone) comes along and either saves Vicken or puts him out of his misery. This is really the point of the story. Journeying to the very end of your nerves before you are able to take that last, final push over the edge seems to be the real reason behind this story. The writing and language is a manipulation, a way that Arjam tries to prepare the reader for the coup de grace that might or might not be coming. Either way, Vicken is a wounded person desperate for an end, and the readers feel these wounds as well. 

This will not go well for many readers. Like the latest Chuck Palahniuk novel, Coup de Grace, is an interactive novella, one that is trying to bring out strong emotions in the reader. And honestly the strong emotions are supposed to be negative. This novella is supposed to make you feel bad, feel depressed after reading, so that we empathize with Vicken (which is pretty close to “victim” when you think about it), and that we understand him and his actions. The novella even has parts where it breaks the fourth wall, makes us choose the next steps, and punishes us for any decision that does not match the bleakness that the book has already displayed. This makes Coup de Grace a difficult book that does not end with a good feeling but makes you think about the different ways that literature can be pushed beyond its normal boundaries. 

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Review: In the Mad Mountains: Stories Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft by Joe R. Lansdale

Posted on October 20, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Tachyon Press, Amazon

Synopsis:

Ten-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-tep) returns with this wicked short story collection of his irreverent Lovecraftian tributes. Lansdale is scarily down-home in these tales, merging his classic gonzo stylings with the eldritch vibes of H. P. Lovecraft. Knowingly skewering Lovecraft’s paranoid mythos, Lansdale embarks upon haunting yet sly explorations of the unknown, capturing the essence of cosmic dread.

A sinister blues recording pressed on vinyl in blood conjures lethal shadows with its unearthly wails. In order to rescue Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn traverses the shifting horrors of the aptly named Dread Island. In the weird Wild West, Reverand Jebidiah Mercer rides into a possessed town to confront the unspeakable in the crawling sky. Legendary detective C. Auguste Dupin uncovers the gruesome secrets of both the blue lightning bug and the Necronomicon.

Exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche, here is a lethally entertaining journey through Joe Lansdale’s twisted landscape, where ancient evils lurk and sanity hangs by a rapidly fraying thread.

Review:

Joe R. Lansdale is a legend that does not need to hear my opinion on his writing. He has won several awards (including ten Bram Stoker Awards), has had his novels and stories adapted into movies and tv episodes, and his Hap and Leonard series of novels became a series that lasted three seasons. After publishing 40 novels and tons of short stories, my opinion is not going to change much. This is why when I look at his collection of Lovecraft inspired short stories, In the Mad Mountains, my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. 

There are many stories in this collection that did not really do much for me. Lovecraft mythos is not on the top of my list of horror I adore, but I thought that if anyone could make stories that are great additions to the collection of writers who are doing great things with Lovecraft’s world, Joe R. Lansdale would be one of them. Instead many of the stories are not terribly engaging. Lansdale does some interesting things with putting characters into Lovecraft’s world. In “Dread Island”, Huck Finn and Jim have to find Tom Sawyer on an island that only shows in the middle of the Mississippi River on random nights before the island disappears again. “The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning” places Edgar Allan Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin, with the Necronomicon. Two of the stories even bring his own characters from other books into his stories (“The Cast of the Stalking Shadow” and “The Crawling Sky”). 

These stories are good, but there are not really that many great stories. I really enjoy the first story, “The Bleeding Shadow”, about a ex-lover Alma May who wants the main character to find her brother, Tootie, and the final story “In the Mad Mountains,” about a group of people shipwrecked in the ice and weird things start killing them all. The rest of the stories are okay, and many of them have been published in other anthologies, or in the case of “The Tall Grass” adapted into an episode of Love, Death + Robots. These stories might be stronger in these original anthologies, surrounded by a variety of different voices because with this collection, there does not seem to be much variation in voice or structure.  Either way, Joe Lansdale is still a legend, and any book by him is worth reading. This one is just not his strongest.

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

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Review: Shock Induction by Chuck Palahniuk

Posted on October 14, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark, satirical parable about a string of mysterious high school disappearances, the seedy underbellies of billionaires, and the tough choices we make in the face of an uncertain future. In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here, in Greener Pastures, that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades, and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal—doesn’t it? In a high school only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite—but how much of a choice do they truly have?

Review:

The newest novel by Chuck Palahnuik, Shock Induction, is another of his recent novels that feels like another step away from Fight Club, Choke, Haunted, and the type of novels that brought him fame. The story takes place in 2037, where Samantha Deel is a highschooler, a strong student, and a singer, living with her parents and sex offender uncle. She is the perfect recruit for Greener Pastures, a company that auctions talented kids off to the highest bidder. This is the simplest part of the plot. The rest of the novel is the challenge that Chuck Palahnuik is giving his readers, hoping that he can manipulate them.

Richard Powers in a recent interview says that a book is actually a full circle between the reader, the writer, and the things that the book is trying to say. Palahniuk sees this as the way he is going to write. He is not only telling the story, but he is trying to get a reaction out of the reader, a change in perspective. In this case, it is an attempt at a form of hypnotism that comes from trying to keep track of several different stories swirling around one main story. He also slips into sections of other pieces of classic literature, including The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, Shakespearian plays, Alice in Wonderland, and David Copperfield. (I am sure that I missed some of the references, but these are ones that I caught.) He writes in the very beginning about ERE poisoning and how the government placed drugs on the pages of classic literature to entice people to read it, and keep reading it. Chuck Palahniuk is trying to explain how he feels while reading all of these classic novels, how the words on the pages are like a drug to him, that quickens his heart rate, makes him feel high, and makes him keep turning the pages. He is trying to show the reader that there is value still in those classic stories, and that literature can be hypnotizing and impactful. He is trying to get his readers to follow him.  

There are many elements to this novel that I am sure that I did not catch the first time through. Shock Induction is not only a love letter to reading and to classic literature, but it is a challenge, almost a dare. He is alienating his casual fans and casual readers in general and is doing his best to step away from the person who wrote Fight Club thirty years ago. He has grown as a writer, and he is forcing his readers to grow with him. His last three novels, The Invention of Sound, Not Forever, But for Now, and now Shock Induction is taking him further and further away from his Fight Club origins, and this is something that I have really enjoyed more than some of his other early fans. Maybe his hypnosis is working.

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

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Review: The Bloodstained Doll by John Everson

Posted on October 8, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

The latest homage to the Italian Giallo film genre by award winning John Everson, with nods to the sensational movies of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Luciano Ercoli, Mario Bava and more.

When Allyson’s mom dies unexpectedly, she thinks her world has hit rock bottom. But that’s before she goes to live with her estranged Uncle Otto in Germany. When a child’s empty casket is unearthed in the backyard during a violent storm, suddenly people close to her uncle start turning up dead. Is there a connection? As the noose tightens and murders draw closer to Berger Mansion, Allyson and her new boyfriend Andrew discover a dark truth hidden in the attic. Soon their lives are at stake if they don’t discover why each broken body is decorated with a Bloodstained Doll.

A modern Giallo, building on Everson’s previous homage to the stylish Italian mystery thrillers, Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds.

Review:

When John Everson released Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds, I wrote in my review that it is a pitch perfect tribute to the Giallo genre. His follow up, The Bloodstained Doll, is another example of Italian Giallo films, a different twist on the genre but still under the umbrella of Giallo. While Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds takes place with a girl navigating her way through a music institute as a stranger and people getting killed around her, The Bloodstained Doll starts with Allyson’s mother dying suddenly and her moving from London to Germany to live on an estate with her uncle Otto. The house is fill with dusty rooms, empty wings, and suspicious people, and while Allyson tries to settle in, she is quickly confronted with the fact that she is inadvertently threatening all of the shady dealings of her uncle, her cousin, and everyone else in and out of the mansion. When everyone starts to die around her, with a bloody, broken porcelain doll left on the corpse, Allyson not only feels like the killer is someone inside of the mansion but that she could very possibly be the next victim. Of course she is right.

With more of a gothic setting and tone, The Bloodstained Doll is a much different representation of the Giallo genre than Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. It is also more of a straightforward telling, not as many red herrings and not really as much of the wildness that is in the previous novel. With more of a subdued tone, Everson has a chance to spend a little more time building the plot, giving the characters some very demented personal flaws and hobbies, and in the end, this does not read as much of a mystery to solve but as a murder novel with trashy rich people doing trashy rich people things. 

I have watched the top Giallo films, and expect for a few, I do not care for them very much. I would much rather read more Giallo novels by John Everson than dive deeper into the film selection. Many of the films have scenes that do not make much sense, that go off in directions that are quickly forgotten, and the real mystery by the end is what even happened. I do not find these same problems in Everson’s novels. His books are much more palatable than many of the movies, and if I am to recommend an introduction to Italian Giallo, I would add The Bloodstained Doll and Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds as great additions to the genre.

I received this as an ARC from Flame Tree Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Other Review of John Everson books:

Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds

The Night Mother and NightWhere

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Review: Moving the Moon: A Night at the Acropolis Museum by Andrea Marcolongo

Posted on September 27, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From one of Europe’s most original and brilliant classicists, an inspiring and deeply personal reflection on loss, memory, and what we owe the past and others, inspired by a night spent in Athens’ Acropolis Museum 

One day in late spring, Andrea Marcolongo walks into an outdoor store in Paris to buy a camp bed, a sleeping bag, and a flashlight. Her destination: not a remote forest or mountain peak, but the deserted halls of one of the most famous museums in the world, the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, where she has been invited to spend a night completely alone. 

But it’s hard to be truly alone when you’re surrounded by the scarred beauty of the Parthenon, lit only by the moon and summoning echoes and ghosts from the past. One of the shadows visiting Marcolongo is that of Lord Elgin, the English diplomat who in the early 19th century orchestrated the controversial removal of the Parthenon marbles from Ottoman Greece to London, where they remain today. The other is the memory of Andrea’s father, whose recent death she is still mourning. 

Drawing on a lifetime of engagement with classical culture and its legacy, Marcolongo examines the burning question of the restitution of works of art removed during the age of imperialism, and the broader issue of the role of power and inequality in the history of art. As the night goes by, however, the empty space left by the missing statues—a wound filled with white plaster—starts evoking other, more personal absences. Surrounded and inspired by the ruins and splendor of the classical world, Marcolongo reflects on the ever-changing relationship between present and past, and on the choices and people that make us who we are, even—or perhaps especially—when we have to leave them behind. The result is a powerful and courageous book, one that crosses time and space to remind us that we cannot live in isolation but are continuously connected and indebted to others. 

“Marcolongo is today’s Montaigne…There is wisdom and grace here to last the ages.”—André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name 

Review:

In the second book by Andrea Marcolongo translated and released by Europa Editions this year, Moving the Moon: A Night at the Acropolis Museum finds Marcolongo spending the night of May 28, 2022 locked in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. She sets up a cot and has brought one book to read, which happens to be a biography of Lord Elgin, the main villain in the story of how the Parthenon was ravaged of all of its art, sculptures, and tons of marble. As Andrea settles in for the night, she tells the story of how the museum is nearly empty because the art and artifacts have never been returned from being taken and distributed throughout Europe. The marbles that Lord Elgin stole end up in the British Museum, and when the new Acropolis Museum opens, the gaps in the building, the pillars and the art are left empty and open. 

Moving the Moon is a slim history of how conquering countries not only take land but take the culture and history of the defeated countries. Most of this type of pillaging ends up in museums, but in the case of Athens, many of the marble sculptures were broken apart before Lord Elgin arrived and were sold to private families. There could still be sculpted heads and marble pieces that have been in a manor for hundreds of years and the current family members have little clue as to its origins. Many museums are curated with items that were stolen from foreign lands They strip cultures and have little interest in giving anything back. They use the guise of, “If it’s not in this major city, it will no longer be seen if returned to its rightful owner.” Even when the Acropolis Museum was remodeled, those museums who have pieces that should rightfully be returned offered to “loan” them their artwork back. It is a weird aspect of world culture where people feel like they are doing lesser people a service by only giving them the bare minimum, in their best interests. The worldwide museum system is only a small reflection of a universal problem.

Andrea Marcolongo does a good job at writing history books from an interesting perspective, almost like she feels like she does not belong in the middle of this story. She writes as if she is an interloper, and she is relaying a story to the reader like it is the hottest gossip. The truth is that she is very good at telling the story and making it feel this way. If I am asked to to recommend any history book on Greek culture, I will always point to her books first. She writes like a friend telling stories, and these are the best types of history books. 

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

Other Books by Andrea Marcolongo:

The Art of Running: Learning to Run Like a Greek

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