Review: Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen

Posted on August 20, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Inspired by Kailee Pedersen’s own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.

The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.

But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices.

Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.

Review:

When I started reading Sacrificial Animals, I did not think I was going to end up liking it very much. It is the story of two brothers, Nick and Joshua Morrow, growing up with their angry father Carlyle in isolation on a one thousand acre farm called Stag’s Crossing. Nobody is allowed on the farm except the three men, and Nick and Joshua cannot wait to leave. The novel is two stories, the past and the present (which “the present” actually takes place in the 90s). The past is about Carlyle being tough and angry with his two sons while the present is about Carlyle calling the boys to return to Stag’s Crossing because he is dying. Joshua had not talked to his father in twenty plus years due to Carlyle not accepting his marriage to Emilia, a stranger, a foreigner, an “unacceptable woman from an unacceptable family.” We think Carlyle is a hard, bitter, racist person, someone who lost his wife and son in childbirth and will never forgive the world for letting this happen. 

I did not instantly love this novel because the beginning starts slow and subject is very dark, with a young Nick trying to get the approval of a father that preferred the company of Joshua, and the summoning of their return to the farm in hopes that things had finally changed. Kailee Pedersen works hard on her prose, using verbose sentences and repetition to make sure the reader understands that Carlyle is a vile human being. As the novel moves forward, the coldness of the father mixed with the loneliness of Nick on the farm and living alone as a forty-three year old makes you feel the impending doom, like something bad is going to happen between the two that will be irreversible. You just do not know what exactly. In the last sixty pages of the novel, the entire thing comes together (or falls apart depending on your perspective), and there is a strange sense that Carlyle was right all along, that he spent most of his life isolating his family from the outside world for a good reason. 

I enjoyed Sacrificial Animals, and maybe it is because I understand a father/son relationship that is rocky at best. The approval that Nick seeks from his father, and the hopes that their relationships will be mended by the end makes complete sense, as does watching nothing turn out the way that it is supposed to turn out. I also like how the construction of this story, from the opening scene to the very last sentence, feels very important. Even though the sentences and word choices can be a little on the busy side, the story itself seems taut, thoughtful, and well-executed. This could be one of my favorite novels of the year. 

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

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Review: Letters to the Purple Satin Killer by Joshua Chaplinsky

Posted on August 6, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Clash books website, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Jonas Williker is considered one of the most sadistic serial murderers of the modern era. This epistolary novel explores the aftermath of his arrest and the psychological trauma of those who lived through it. The Pennsylvania native brutalized his way into the zeitgeist during the early part of the new millennium, leaving a trail of corpses across five states before his eventual arrest. All told, Williker was responsible for the rape and murder of 23 women, and is suspected in the deaths of dozens more. His calling card—a torn piece of fabric found on or inside the bodies of his victims—helped popularize his now ubiquitous nickname. The Purple Satin Killer.  In the years following his arrest, Jonas Williker received hundreds of letters in prison. Collected here, these letters offer a unique glimpse into a depraved mind through a human lens, including contributions from family, the bereaved, and self-professed “fans.” They represent a chilling portrait of the American psyche, skewering a media obsessed culture where murderers are celebrities to revere. What you learn about the man from these letters will shock you, but not as much as what you learn about yourself.

Review:

Jonas Williker is a serial killer who has murdered 23 women and is finally caught due to an assault charge in Nevada. He has been extradited to Indiana, tried, sentenced, and put to death by the state. Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is a collection of the letters that were found in his belongings and arranged to tell a narrative of his story and the people who are influenced by him. He recieves letters from his mother, his old childhood friend, his ex-girlfriend, a victim who survived, and tons of admirers, from women obsessed with him to memorabilia collectors to a Satin Killer themed death metal band that also happens to be from my hometown. The interesting thing is that all of the letters are to The Purple Satin Killer, and we do not get a single word from Jonas Williker himself, only a few instances of people reacting to letters he had written in response. 

In a way Joshua Chaplinsky has put us behind bars with Jonas Williker. We are given the brief outline of what he did in the preface, but after that, all we do is wait and receive correspondence from the people who have written to him. None of these letters are forced. There is nothing that can make someone write a letter to a serial killer, even if he is your son. So we are getting glimpses of those outside of his cell and how they perceive him are reacting to him. The only indications we get of Jonas responding is when there is a reaction in the next letter. Everyone is motivated by their desires. We are just the interlopers in the story, but we also feel a closer kinship to the coldness of Jonas Williker than to those who are communicating with him. 

This novel is over 400 pages of letters, and most of them are linked and bring a character arc. From his mother, to an obsessed woman, to one of his victims that lived, to his childhood friend that wonders if their friendship was legitimate or something that Jonas needed to “look normal”, as Williker gets closer and closer to his execution, the letters become more erratic, more off-kilter, more desperate, and you can feel the authors of the letters spiraling out of control. The people who are obsessed with him or blame will no longer have that person, this scapegoat where they can funnel their feelings. In the end the whole novel is cloaked in a feeling of loss, sadness, and despair that has become a major part of every single person Jonas Williker encounters. You cannot help but feel the loss of Jonas Williker as well when the final pages are read.

I received this as an ARC from the author for an honest review, but I will be getting a hard copy when it is released. This is one of the few novels I already want to reread.

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Review: I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

Posted on August 3, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.

Review:

There is no doubt that anyone trying to write a slasher novel will be compared to Stephen Graham Jones. Due to the amount of slasher novels he has written (I am counting five that I have personally read), it is no doubt that Jones is seen as someone who has cornered the market of the slasher novel. And it is not be done better. Stephen Graham Jones has rules for the slasher genre, the biggest one being that slasher stories are born from someone being mistreated, bullied, or murdered, and there has to be an element of revenge in every slasher story. This is how we get Tolly Driver, a kid who drinks too much at a party, gets duct taped to a patio chair and nearly killed when given a drink that was filled with peanuts, due to him being highly allergic. This is an oversimplification of the nuances of Driver’s revenge, but is the origins of his slasher story. 

Steven Graham Jones writes in a way that is slow and deliberate, like a slasher stalking it’s prey, knowing that there is no chance at escape. He likes to reveal pieces of the plot then take his time getting there. For example, we know from the first few pages that the change in Tolly Driver is due to an incident with peanuts, but it takes him about fifty pages to get there. Instead he sets the scene, immerses us in teenage drama in Lamesa, Texas in 1989, shows us the dynamics between the kids at the party, and the motivation for the reason why Tolly drinks too much and acts foolish enough for people to be mad enough to tape him to a pool chair. Stephen Graham Jones writes these types of scenes throughout all of his novels, where he gives us a glimpse of what is going to happen but then takes his time getting there. In some of his writing, this gets to be too big of a distraction, but the way that I Was a Teenage Slasher works out makes it compelling and more of an immersive story. 


In the end, I Was a Teenage Slasher is a pretty simple, straightforward book. Like slasher movies, the motivation is established early on, and the kills are quick and the plot moves quickly, and the final girl is established. There are a few elements that really sets Tolly Driver apart from other slashers. It is entertaining to watch him turn from a run-of-the-mill teenager who is trying to make friends and get girls to notice him into a killer who does not even understand what is happening. This might not be my favorite Stephen Graham Jones novel (I’m still partial to Only Good Indians), but it is high on the list of his novels worth reading.

Other Reviews of books by Stephen Graham Jones

My Heart is a Chainsaw

Night of the Mannequins

Only Good Indians

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Review: Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

Posted on July 16, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
 
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”  
 
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay. 
 
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.  
 
But Other Mommy needs an answer. 
 
Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror told by the child Bela. A story about a family as haunted as their home.

Review:

Josh Malerman is doing his best to make himself the best horror writer working today. Since releasing Birdbox, he has had a new release almost every single year, and each one of his books is fantastic. His new novel, Incidents Around the House, might be the novel that cements him as not only a household name in horror but in all reading communities.

Narrated by Bela, the eight year old child of Ursula and Russ, there is something in their house, an entity that wants Bela to call her “Other Mommy” and allow her to “enter her heart.” When Other Mommy starts to show herself to other people besides Bela, like her mother and father, people at a party, and everywhere Bela tries to go, the novel becomes a novel of a mother and father trying to protect their child, fighting for survival, while working through the problems that they have in their marriage. They think that being a team will be the only thing that will drive Other Mommy away.

This story moves fast, and this creates a tension that rises and rises. The reader is about to break along with Bela and her family. Malerman makes us feel like we are part of the team, trying to come up with the plan to fight this threat by creating an empathy toward Bela’s mother and father. Bela’s parents are deeply flawed, making mistakes in their marriage and in their lives. The fear and threat of Other Mommy makes them reevaluate themselves and their worry feels genuine and palpable. Anyone who is a parent of a child that sees a poltergeist coming out of their closet would have the same reaction, not only of fear and anger but also of protection, You would do exactly what Bela’s parents do, try to keep yourself between the entity and your child. Malerman makes the problem they have a human one. Unlike many horror novels, the parents in Incidents Around the House look for answers, for an expert on the internet, for some sort of help, and there is none. The feeling that this is how the situation would play out in real life, that there were no real experts to get rid of a spirit haunting your house is well explored. 

This is the fifth Josh Malerman book I have reviewed, and this is high on the list of his best work. I like the characters, the story moves swiftly, and in the end, all we want is for Bela to be able to go back to being an eight year old again.

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

Reviews of other Josh Malerman books:

Inspection

Daphne

“Pearl”

Goblin

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Review: The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim

Posted on July 12, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

Review:

There is a rage inside of Ji-won. She is a college freshman, living with her mother and sister Ji-hyun in a cramped apartment. Her mother prepares huge Korean meals for their absent father because he has walked out of their lives to be with another woman, and she knows that her cooking will bring him back. On campus, Geoffrey follows Ji-won around, wants to be her friend, texting her and helping her through classes at a college she did not want to go to. And then her mother meets George. 

The beginning of the novel is such a good set up for the things to come. There seems to be a tightness in the family that even though there is sadness from their father leaving. The three women have one another and they will make the best of it. When George is introduced, he is a disruption to everything in Ji-won’s life. He is a white man who appreciates Asian culture, in a racist way where he talks about how he has been all over Korea and China so he understand them. He does not take the time to learn the sisters’ names because they are too hard so he gives them nicknames. The grievances Ji-won has against George from day one are valid, and he is a scumbag. George, his behavior, and their mother’s absolute joy and love for him brings up uncontrollable anger in Ji-won. Since her family structure makes it difficult to express her distrust and hatred for George, she uses other, unhealthy activities as an outlet to her anger and rage.


The Eyes are the Best Part is a well structured, fast moving horror novel, and what makes this compelling is that we do like Ji-won. We want her to get better, to find a better way to express her emotions, and to conquer the problems that she faces. Or maybe I want her to get better. I am a man reading this book. Most of Ji-won’s feelings and anger are because the men in her life have let her down. Her father has left her family to be with another woman and start a new family, George is the piece of garbage that he is, and even Geoffrey, who says that he is a feminist, does not take her rejection to his advances in a healthy way. Ji-won’s life would be better if one single male actually treated her with care and understanding, and I feel like this leaves me as a male reader, a father to girls, as someone who wishes that she was given better. My empathy is for Ji-won throughout this whole novel, and it makes me want her to get away with the things that she does. Even though her actions are unacceptable, throughout the entire novel, I want Ji-won to be able to say at the end that freshman year of college sure was a weird one.

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Review: Bear by Julia Phillips

Posted on July 9, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A mesmerising novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor — a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth.

They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.

Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.

Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.

A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us — and within us — Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.

Review:

Bear is the story of two sisters who live with their dying mother in a house that is falling apart on an island filled with money and tourists. When a bear swims to the island and starts to terrorize the inhabitants, the two sisters have opposite reactions. Sam sees the bear as a threat to their lives whereas Elena sees the bear as a sign of miracles to come. The bear becomes an object that draws a wedge between the two sisters and is ultimately a bringer of truth.

Sometimes metaphors are hard to figure out, but in Bear, the arrival of the animal and the two sisters’ opposite reactions make it pretty easy. The huge figure of the hulking animal, smelling of musk and rot, is really the arrival of reality for Sam. She has lived in a world of obviousness and delusion, thinking that there are plans for after their mother died, and that it was just her and her sister against the world. The bear shows her that Elena has other interests besides her plans. Elena is burdened with the day to day crush of debt and her mother’s care, problems with no end in sight, and the threat of their house falling apart. To Elena, the bear is something new, something that gives her hope, something that makes Elena think about a better life where she spends time escaping her burdens. 

I enjoyed Bear more than I expected. I did not initially care much for Sam. She is rude, condescending, and not really interested in anything but getting off of the island as soon as her mother dies. While the story unfolds, the delusions that she holds unravel, and we realize that needs our sympathy more than our judgment. Both sisters are dealing with the same central grief of their mother’s eventual death, and Sam’s way of dealing with her mother’s sickness is to have dreams and almost an excitement toward how much different and better her life will be as soon as she dies. This makes her cold toward everyone she meets, and while her delusions fall apart, there is a little sense of satisfaction that she was so completely wrong and left with nothing in the end.

Bear is a good novel, and it is one where many pieces of the story will stick with me for a long time after finishing the novel. I like the remoteness of the island and the indifference of the character who changes the life of Elena and Sam. The bear does not care about their mother, their finances, their house, their life situation, and the secrets that they keep from each other, but he is able to be the catalyst to the truth being revealed. 

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

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Review: Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida

Posted on July 2, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A symphony of interconnected lives that offers a compelling reflection on life in modern-day metropolises at the intersection of isolation and intimacy.

Set over several nights, between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., in and around Tokyo, this mind-blowingly constructed book is an elaborate, energetic fresco of human nocturnal existence in all its mystery, an enigmatic literary mix of Agatha Christie, Teju Cole, and Heironymous Bosch.

On this journey through the labyrinthine streets and hidden corners of one of the world’s most fascinating cities, everybody is searching for something, and maybe searching in the wrong places. Elements of the fantastical and the surreal abound, as they tend to do in the early pre-dawn hours of the morning, yet the settings, the human stories, and each character’s search are all as real as can be.

Goodnight Tokyo offers readers a unique and intimate take on Tokyo as seen through the eyes of a large cast of colorful characters. Their lives, as disparate and as far apart as they may seem, are in fact intricately interconnected and as their fates converge against the backdrop of the city’s neon-lit streets and quiet alleyways, Yoshida masterfully portrays in captivating, lyrical prose the complexities of human relationships, the mystery of human connection, and the universal quest for meaning.

Review:

Taking place between one and four-thirty in the morning, Goodnight Tokyo explores what it feels like to be awake and to work in the middle of the night in the most populated city in the world. Several characters interact, cross paths, and keep going on the straight axis of their lives. Others are doubling back to find something, a person or an object with which they had a random interaction and want to recapture a feeling. Many of the characters are working, but all of the characters are awake in the sleeping city, living a nocturnal life that is filled with the same feelings of loss, desire, and yearning for companionship as anyone living a regular, daytime existence.

In the short afterward, Atsuhiro Yoshida explains that Goodnight Tokyo is really a novel in short stories, the result of characters in ten different novels crossing paths in the middle of the night. This explanation sums up the way that Goodnight Tokyo is written and how it feels. There are many moments in the novel where characters meet in a serendipitous way, where Fate seems to be another character, pulling strings to make characters make decisions, walk down the wrong street, suddenly get hungry for a ham and egg breakfast set at a diner, or remember that they have a business card to an all night taxi service that will keep them within the orbit of the other characters. The nights in Tokyo are weird, but the weirdness in this novel seems to be drawn by Fate, and this turns Goodnight Tokyo is a very charming novel. 

I have worked night shift the last twelve years, and even on my days off, I am awake most nights between one and four-thirty in the morning. I am not always taking taxis or walking around the city, but there is definitely a distinct feeling of being up in the middle of the night that is captured in Goodnight Tokyo. That feeling of being awake while most everyone else is asleep, almost like you are being sneaky, simply because most everyone is not aware of anything you are doing. Walking through the sleeping city makes dark streets feel more dangerous than they are, and that genuine surprise of running into someone else working or living the same life as you is perfectly captured in this novel. What makes this work most as a novel is Atsuhiro Yoshida’s ability to capture the quiet atmosphere of a city where you are not only traveling through but you are surrounded by people who are sleeping. You want to make sure that you do not wake up anyone, and Goodnight Tokyo definitely feels like a novel about people living this life, trying to connect with one another while trying not to wake up their sleeping neighbors. I enjoyed Atsuhiro Yoshida’s storytelling and I hope that Goodnight Tokyo is the first in a series of translations of his work. 


I received an ARC of Goodnight Tokyo from Europa Editions in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: youthjuice by E.K. Sathue

Posted on June 27, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

A 29-year-old copywriter realizes that beauty is possible—at a terrible cost—in this surreal, satirical send-up of NYC It-girl culture.

From Sophia Bannion’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE (hee-bee), a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York’s trendy SoHo neighborhood and named after the Greek goddess of youth, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty, has plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knockoffs and doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence—and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic founder and CEO.

Soon, Sophia is addicted to her HEBE lifestyle—especially youthjuice, the fatty, soothing moisturizer Tree has asked Sophia to test. But when cracks in HEBE’s infrastructure start to worsen—and Sophia learns the gruesome secret ingredient at the heart of youthjuice—she has to decide how far she’s willing to go to stay beautiful forever.

Glittering with ominous flashes of Sophia’s coming-of-rage story, former beauty editor E.K. Sathue’s horror debut is as incisive as it is stomach-churning in its portrayal of all-consuming female friendship and the beauty industry’s short attention span. youthjuice does to skincare influencers what Bret Easton Ellis did to yuppies. You’ll never moisturize the same way again.

Review:

Nothing is as it seems in E.K. Sathue’s novel, youthjuice. Sophia lands a job at a high end makeup company, HEBE as one of their “storytellers”. They are testing a new anti-aging cream they call “youthjuice” on the inner circle of the company, and the cream has dramatic effects. The origins of the cream and the lifestyle captures Sophia becomes a catalyst for her alienating her friends and boyfriend while digging deeper and deeper into the work of HEBE. 

The overall concepts of the novel are interesting. I do like stories about people put into situations and environments that they are ill equipped to handle so they either change the culture or adapt. Sophia is not ready for HEBE when she first arrived and does not know what they are doing to reinvent makeup. She just looks up to Tree Whitestone, the CEO, and will do what it takes to find her footing while trying to balance her old life with her new. These ideas are there, but they are not solid. The storytelling is soft and does not do the job in the way that it wants to. The characters are underdeveloped, and I don’t feel like this will be a novel that I remember a few days from now. Sophia’s journey through destroying every relationship she has is fairly mundane, the only one that really sticks out is the falling out between her and her roommate Dom, whom we only know as someone she is close to and shares clothes with. The one relationship that Sathue spends a great deal of the novel exploring is flashbacks from when Sophia was in high school and had a friend named Mona. The finale of that friendship is so generic and boring that any reader will guess the end within the first few pages. Sophia is supposed to be written as someone who is cold and disinterested in other people, but the truth is she comes off as self-centered, bitchy, and a person nobody would want to be around in the first place. For her to get deep into the inner circle of HEBE is unexplained and unexplainable. Maybe it is because she is just as much of a fraud as everyone else in the novel.

There is a great amount of potential in youthjuice. I like the ideas of the story, but I do not like the execution. The novel feels like it could use some more focus and editing. At 288 pages, it seems like it is still at least fifty pages too long. 

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

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Review: Dog Men by Gavin Torvik

Posted on June 3, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

In the Canadian wilderness, Chris seeks solace in nature, surviving off the land as he wanders across rugged terrain, from campsite to campsite. But his tranquil existence is shattered when he’s ensnared by a group of ruthless strangers, thrust into a harrowing game where survival demands a deadly kill or be killed.

In a twisted world where the distinction between man and beast blur, Chris wrestles not only to stay alive but to keep ahold of his sanity in the process. On each pulse-pounding page, the stakes escalate, hurtling toward a crescendo of unbridled savagery  that you’ll never see coming. 

Review:

Chris is a guy living out of his car, living off of peanut butter and hot dogs, and enjoying the freedom of no responsibilities in the Canadian wilderness. He is enjoying his life, taking in the scenery, when a large black extended cab truck with three men pulls up, blaring music and disrupting his peace. This is a peace that Chris will never get back. As soon as he meets these men, his life is turned into a game of survival where he is treated more like an animal than a man and is competing for his life against other men who are doing the same thing. Gavin Torvik’s book is dark, brutal, and bleak, and in the beginning there is a note that says it is based on a true story. This fact reminds me of the way that The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum is based on a true story. Both stories are is proof that the biggest monsters are humans.

There are some aspects to this novella that make it work. One is the fear that is generated when we meet the villains in the middle of a pristine landscape. They are loud and disruptive, driving a loud truck and blaring EDM music out of the speakers. The halting to the flow of nature makes it obvious from the start that these are men are out to run someone’s life. The masculinity of the truck with the artificial tones of the music completely take over the serenity of the scene immediately, and we can sense the danger that Chris is in as soon as the truck pulls up next to him. The “masculinity” of the three villains is attempted to be proven over and over by the way that they treat Chris and one another. They are brutal, antagonistic, and use homophobic slurs to “prove” how strong and “manly” they are. The fact that none of these characters ever get a real name, that they stay anonymous, keeps a distance between them and any sort of humanity, This wedge between human and animal grows wider and wider as the story moves on.

I like the setup of this novella, and even though some of it felt a little repetitive, particularly how many fights scenes there are in such a short book, it is compelling and disturbing. I would have liked to have more time with Chris in isolation, trying to connect with someone or something to help him a little more, not only to escape but to deal with the treatment and isolation that he is receiving. As it is, we just get him going to fights, recovering, and trying to escape. One thing is that a human will find a way to adapt to any situation, regardless of how horrific, and I do not see Chris doing this at all. I do like the ideas forged in Dog Men, but turning down some of the violence for more about Chris’s mental survival, would turned this book into a richer experience. As it is, I got the feeling while reading that I am just a spectator in cruelty and physical survival, another faceless man passively watching fights.

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

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Review: Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane

Posted on May 31, 2024 by ghostvillehero

Buy it here:

Amazon, Bookshop

Synopsis:

Debut author Darby Kane thrills with this twisty domestic suspense novel that asks one central question: shouldn’t a dead husband stay dead?

Lila Ridgefield lives in an idyllic college town, but not everything is what it seems. Lila isn’t what she seems. A student vanished months ago. Now, Lila’s husband, Aaron, is also missing. At first these cases are treated as horrible coincidences until it’s discovered the student is really the third of three unexplained disappearances over the last few years. The police are desperate to find the connection, if there even is one. Little do they know they might be stumbling over only part of the truth….

With the small town in an uproar, everyone is worried about the whereabouts of their beloved high school teacher. Everyone except Lila, his wife. She’s definitely confused about her missing husband but only because she was the last person to see his body, and now it’s gone.

Review:

There are some books that I cannot explain what motivates me to read them. Pretty Little Wife, the debut novel by Darby Kane, is one of them. I know I ordered it as part of the Book of the Month selections in November 2020, and looking back at the selections that month, this was probably the best choice (most likely to be read even though it took almost four years). Darby Kane has been publishing a new book every year since 2020, and after reading Pretty Little Wife, it is no wonder that she has a good readership.

Pretty Little Wife starts with Lila Ridgefield finding her husband’s secret phone filled with explicit videos of him having sex with his high school students. Lila is devastated that her perfectly cold marriage is being ruined by her husband’s predator desires so she decides to kill him. She executes a plan, but instead of authorities finding his dead body in his car on the school grounds, they find nothing, no car, no body, no husband. While Aaron’s disappearance starts and investigation, Lila is also trying to find out what happened to him and where he is hiding out. There is a great deal of tension in several different relationships, but the one battle that drives the novel is between Lila and Ginny, the lead investigator into Aaron’s disappearance. The women are a lot alike, usually the smartest and most cunning person in the room, and pitting them against each other is the most compelling part of the novel because you honestly never know who is going to become the victor until the very end. 


I liked the first two acts of Pretty Little Wife, the psychological battle between Ginny and Lila added to the mystery of what actually happened to Aaron are what push this novel forward at a breakneck speed. Before the third act, many of the secrets are revealed and the final push of the novel is tying up the new information and action. It does not feel as well plotted as the first 75% of the novel and by the end, I was ready for it to be over. This is not to say that I did not enjoy the experience. I just did not have the same connection to the book by the end as I did throughout. I do think this novel is worth reading, and I will most likely read another Darby Kane novel at some point, and I respect anyone who can write a novel every year with this many twists and turns, but I am not going to be rushing out to read her other books. Maybe I will take another chance someday if one becomes a Book of the Month selection. 

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