Possession - Katie Lowe

 Possession is a psychological thriller that follows Hannah as her past comes back to threaten her future.  Ten yeas ago, Hannah's husband was murdered in their home but Hannah doesn't remember anything from that night.  She is, understandably, the main person of interest in the case until the police end up charging someone else with the murder.  Hannah takes her daughter and moves on with her life until a popular true crime podcast dedicates a whole season to her husband's murder.  The podcast casts doubts on the case, Hannah's memory loss, and unearths other troubling parts of Hannah's past.  

The part of the book I was most worried about ended up being my favorite - the podcast.  Despite loving to read thrillers and watching all sorts of police procedurals on TV, I have yet to fall in love with the true crime genre.  I've tried a book here and there, but didn't like them mostly because I found the writing pretty dry and I felt the story leaned too hard on the 'this is all true' aspect to pull the reader into the narrative. I know true crime podcasts are very popular and I haven't tried any of them out yet. That being said, I know how popular true crime podcasts are and incorporating true crime podcasts into thriller novels is a bit of a recent trend. Before reading this, I was worried it would come off too heavy handed or would be used as an excuse for an exposition dump.  I was pleasantly surprised that neither of these options ended up being true.  I think the podcast angle really worked well for me because it was set up as the antagonist in the story.  Hannah is not a part of the podcast and she listens every week just like the rest of the audience.  We don't get any perspectives or behind the scenes from the podcast host so the reader sees the podcast as an outside force coming to ruin Hannah's life.  I loved getting Hannah's reactions as she listened to the podcast episodes and it was a constant source of tension in the novel since the episodes are released weekly.  

 I think Lowe did an incredible job writing the slow psychological breakdown of Hannah.  Psychological thrillers, from a reader perspective, can be tricky to get just right.  In this case, the gradual but consistent disassembly of Hannah's life and what she thought was true was incredibly paced and explored.  The story is told in first person so we are in Hannah's head and there is a lot going on in there.  Hannah is a psychologist and is therefore a bit hyper-aware of her actions and thoughts but that doesn't stop her from doing things that she knows maybe she shouldn't.  These sorts of contrasts grow in magnitude throughout the book and give the reader a really good view into Hannah's mental descent.  While the podcast is the main antagonist in the story, much of the tension and emotion in the book comes from Hannah internally.  Sure, once a few episodes are aired, the community starts whispering about Hannah and there are more external consequences but the majority of the story is Hannah and how she's dealing with finding out these missing parts of her husband's murder. The way the narrative style changes during the story is also incredibly well done and so gradual that I really didn't notice it was happening - which is exactly how I like it!  It is really fun to go back to the first few chapters and compare them to the last few and compare the style of both sections.  Lowe did a great job getting the reader into Hannah's head and keeping them there all the way through to the ending.  

The relationships Hannah has with the other characters were handled really well.  I think each character - Dan, Evie, Darcy, and Sarah - all give us one particular part of Hannah's life and the reader can use that relationship as a lens to see how Hannah is coping.  Sometimes, with side characters, I can get them confused if they don't show up often enough or aren't distinct enough from the other characters.  For example, if a main character has three friends, all three better be distinctive from each other and each serve their own purpose in the narrative or else my brain is going to just squish them all together.  In this case, each of the side characters were very distinct and Hannah is different with each of them as well.  Hannah has different masks that she puts on and since the reader is in Hannah's head, we can see her choose her words or actions carefully with each individual person she is interacting with.  I think this is really true for most people - I know I'm not the exact same with my fiance as I am with the cashier at the grocery store - and as a reader, these different relationships and versions of Hannah we get really deepen the narrative as a whole.  (As a side note, Hannah and Dan's dynamic reminded me of Joyce and Bob from Stranger Things.)

The one part that irked me was the ending.  I had to take a few days to figure out exactly how I felt about the ending and why I felt that way.  No spoilers, obviously, so this is going to be a bit vague.  First off, I thought the ending was really well done from a technical aspect.  There were twists, turns, and more twists.  All the pieces were falling into place and some of my guesses from earlier in the book were paying off which I really enjoy in a thriller.  My guesses were only 50% accurate which was really fun to see how Lowe took what I was thinking and then went three steps further with it.  The ending also plays on reader expectations, in general.  Most readers expect in most books for the main group of characters to 'win' the story, come out on top, beat the bad guy, be somewhat happy in the end.  Plot armor is a phrase that exists for a reason which is why stories like Game of Thrones are so fun for a lot of people to read (or watch) because there is that constant threat of 'maybe this character won't make it out alive' to engage the reader.  This ending, without giving too much away, played on my expectations that the main group of characters we'd been following for the past 300+ pages were going to 'win' and when the ending came, it wasn't as cut and dry as I was expecting it to be and it felt like I had lost.  The only similar feeling I can think of is when you're watching your favorite sports team almost win and then the other team scores right near the end of the game and ends up winning the whole thing.  There's a sense of disappointment there because the game had been so good but the ending just didn't go your way.  I know the endings to thrillers can make or break a book for most people and I'll admit when I first finished the book, I was a little mad at it.  But after thinking it over for a few days and reflecting on the overall reading experience and plot as a whole, I decided while I didn't have to like the ending, I do respect it from a craft perspective and other readers who maybe didn't get as attached to certain characters might actually really like the ending.

I loved the way the flashbacks were presented and integrated into the book.  We get more and more of them as the book progresses, which lines up with Hannah remembering more as the podcast uncovers some dirty laundry each episode.  I've read a few thrillers where the reader knows more than the protagonist and while it is fun to see a character discover something the reader already knows, I do prefer to discover along side the main character.  Watching Hannah figure out what really happened 10 years ago at the same time her current life is falling apart was heartbreaking but in the best possible way because we are rooting for her the entire way.  Also, the big reveal at the end in which the reader gets a sort of flashback over the recent events to show how everything was connected was really great.  

 Overall, this is a very well crafted psychological thriller. The podcast elements are incorporated well into the storyline, interesting and complex character relationships, and while the ending stung a bit all the story lines came together perfectly in the end.

352 pages

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC - release date is January 26, 2021.

The Wife Upstairs - Rachel Hawkins

This novel is marketed as a twist on the classic Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.  It takes place in a gated community in Birmingham, Alabama and follows dog walker Jane as she meets Eddie Rochester six months after his wife, Bea, and her friend, Blanche, disappeared.  Jane and Eddie's relationship quickly blossoms and before long, Jane is no longer the neighborhood dog walker but instead becomes a member of the community.  As Jane and Eddie's relationship grows more serious, Jane starts to hear whispers of theories about what really happened to Bea and Blanche and as much as she wants to put these rumors out of her mind, Jane just can't seem to stay away.

I'll admit that I haven't read Jane Eyre, but I knew enough of the plot from just pop culture references to get a general idea of what this plot was going to be.  After I finished reading The Wife Upstairs, I did look up a more detailed synopsis of the plot just to see the similarities. In my opinion, The Wife Upstairs takes a perfect amount of inspiration from Jane Eyre but there are enough modern twists and changes that make it a unique story.  I found this a very fun and enjoyable read and didn't feel like I was missing out on anything from not having read Jane Eyre.

 By far my most favorite thing about this read was the actual writing.  The prose was pretty straightforward, not super flowery or stylized, but it sucked me into the story so fast I was 30% in before I knew it.  The majority of the story is Jane becoming one of the ladies in this community and listening to them gossip about past events.  In theory, that could come off as very boring and lazy storytelling.  However, Hawkins injects so much personality into Jane's inner thoughts or into the little witty retorts that other characters have that it becomes so interesting.  I got the same feeling when I read The Girl on the Train where, for the majority of the book, there wasn't a whole lot of action going on and most of the characters were pretty unlikeable, but there was that certain pull in the narrative that just kept me turning the pages. 

I really enjoyed the way the narrative was split up.  We get both Jane's and Bea's POV in different parts of the novel as well as flashbacks to both their lives before meeting Eddie.  I think this not only plays on reader expectation, but it gives a really interesting comparison between what Jane is hearing from the neighbors and then the truth of what happened in the past.  Being in both Jane's and Bea's head also allows the reader to know exactly what type of person each woman is.  Jane is hiding her identity for some reason, thinks often about stealing items from the wealthy ladies of the community, and she makes very calculated moves in her relationship with Eddie.  Bea is very similar in that she manipulates the people and situations around her for her benefit.  I think the POV switching was done at just the right time to heighten the tension of the story.  I find that some multi-POV books will use one POV as almost a forced cliffhanger where the main POV has a major plot development but instead of exploring that more, we have to hang out in a secondary POV for a while to artificially build tension and suspense.  I didn't find that was the case in this book and I was relieved.  It really felt like the two POVs were working together and building on one another, which I give Hawkins big points for.

Maybe it was just the fact that this was a gated community, but it was giving me major Desperate Housewives vibes the whole time.  The reader gets these glimpses of the underbelly of these perfectly manicured houses and lives and each time we would get a hint of something going on under the surface, I just wanted to dive right in.  The little battles and snide remarks that Jane first puts up with and then participates in were very well done and showed Jane's character development.  I also found it really interesting how invested Jane was in fitting in with the other ladies of the neighborhood.  She was constantly evaluating how they acted, how they dressed, what they talked about and then would imitate them in order to get closer to their inner circle.  I also thought it was interesting that all of these characters are flawed in some way and it is a little hard to root for any one character in particular since they all are active participants, in a way, of their own unhappiness.  We know Jane isn't some naive girl who gets blinded by a whirlwind romance and Bea wasn't an innocent victim of circumstance.

I do wish we would have gotten more of the relationship between Jane and Eddie.  I never really found their relationship believable.  In the above mentioned Mashable article, they state that du Maurier never saw Rebecca as a romance and didn't like when people categorized it as such and I can get on board with that idea.  However, I would have liked to see more emotional development and feelings on both sides. We get Jane's POV which does show that she really does like Eddie, but she also manipulates him into moving faster along in their relationship at times in order to cement her place in the neighborhood.  These inner thoughts and manipulations are contrasted by other thoughts about how in love with Eddie she is and how, much to her own surprise, she really can see a life with him.  It came off a little disjointed for me and maybe if we had more slice of life scenes with the two of them being an actual couple, I could understand their relationship more.  

I really loved the ending. No spoilers, of course, but I think all the characters got their appropriate ending.  The ending is a little open-ended on some details but overall, I think the reader gets a good idea of where these characters are ending up after the whole ordeal of the book.  Toward the end, we actually get a scene with Jane and the police detective investigating Bea and Blanche's disappearance and I wish we had gotten more of these scenes throughout the book.  It was really interesting to be in Jane's head as she chose her words and way of speaking specifically to mislead the detective.  Jane knew she needed to come off as X so she made sure to say Y and act like Z in order to do that.  I wouldn't say that I was rooting for Jane by the end because she was a good character that I wanted to have a happy ending, I would say that I was rooting for Jane by the end because she's just so damn good at manipulating to get what she needs and I want to see her do more of that.

 

 Overall, a great mystery read that takes a classic tale and gives it a fresh new spin. The characters were all fantastic and the writing style really pulled me along.  It was a bit of a slow burn mystery but really pays off in the end. 

 304 pages

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC!  Publication date is January 05, 2021.

A House at the Bottom of a Lake - Josh Malerman

 First off, let me say I loved this story.  But, let's just get it out of the way now, this book will not be for everyone.  It is very weird and sort of hard to talk about without going into specific details.  But based on the reviews I've read, people either really love it or are sort of meh about it.  I fall on the love it side of the argument.  This is a novella following two 17-year olds who, on their first date, discover a house at the bottom of a lake.  The rest of the story is mostly them exploring the house and exploring their feelings for each other.  I'm not very well read in this sort of weird/speculative/magic realism type of genre so I'm not sure what the best way to describe this book is.  I was trying to explain it to my non-reader boyfriend and said it was very similar levels and types of weird to the Pan's Labyrinth movie (which he's seen).  After having some more time to think and reflect, I've settled on that comparison as the best I can think of.  This house is based in reality - the characters are literally canoeing across a lake and literally get scuba gear to go down and explore - but there's an otherworldly element and feeling once they're inside the house.

My absolute favorite part of this book is the tone and horror elements.  I've seen some reviews questioning why anyone would consider this book horror and while there aren't any graphic scenes or much of a direct threat to the characters' well-being but I don't think those are the only things that can count as horror.  I would say maybe 'unsettling' or 'eerie' would be a better description for the tone, but I entirely disagree with the people saying this isn't horror in the slightest.  There were scenes that made me feel scared, claustrophobic, and even a little panicky.  But these scenes were balanced well with much more light scenes of the two characters just relaxing on the lake, soaking up some sun. One of the taglines for this book is "just because a house is empty, doesn’t mean nobody’s home" and I think this really sets the tone for the book.  In the same vein, my favorite line of the book is something along the lines of: 'they wouldn't ask how or why, but they never thought about asking who'. In my opinion, this isn't the type of book to really cause nightmares, but it is one that will put you on edge enough to maybe double check that the doors are locked or think twice about hearing that creak in the house.

I was a little icked out by the fact that we get some fairly explicit intimacy scenes between the two characters who are only 17. They weren't long or drawn out, but they were explicit enough that I was a little uncomfortable.  And this is coming from someone who reads a ton of romance books with a ton of explicit sex scenes.  It didn't bother me enough to knock it down in rating or tarnish my overall feelings about the book, but I do know some people feel differently about this than I do so I just wanted to throw it out there.

 I really enjoyed how many scenes we got of these two characters exploring the house.  I was a bit afraid going into the book that they might only go in the house a handful of times and then spend the rest of the book just talking about the house.  But I'd say the majority of the middle of the book was spent underwater which was by far my favorite part of the book.  I think the descriptions were really well done and I could clearly picture where the characters were going while they were in the house.  It was really helpful that, when they were taking turns exploring, one character would start where the other left off so we didn't get an overload of repetition of the first initial rooms which I think would have made the narrative drag on.  Instead, every time they were exploring the house, they found a new area to explore and the reader was exploring right along side of them.

The final note I want to mention about this book is something that might just be a 'me-thing' and I'm not sure if it is a necessarily a pro or con, but this book feels like something that I would have read in an English Lit class.  It has that literary fiction feeling but with enough of those 'other' elements (magical realism or whatever you want to call it) that it feels like it would lead to some really interesting class discussions.  The ending is also pretty open to interpretation which, again, would be open to some interesting discussions.  I'll fully admit that I'm not really a big reader of contemporary or literary fiction books.  I'm much more of a genre-heavy reader (romance, thrillers, occasional sci-fi, etc) and while this book did have those genre elements, I felt it had a much more literary/contemporary lean than what the synopsis led me to believe.  I'm also not sure if I think that all contemporary/literary sounding books would come across like books to be read in school, but I definitely thought that about this one. I really only got this feeling in the beginning and ending 15%s of the book, the middle was much more heavy into those genre elements and I was very invested in the exploration of the house.

 

Overall, a really weird/speculative/magic realism type of story with some nice unsettling and eerie moments sprinkled in.  Feels like the kind of book you need to have a discussion with other people about and maybe read a few times to get everything out of it.  It isn't for everyone, but I really liked it in the end.

115 pages

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC.

Originally published: October 31st 2016 by This Is Horror. 

New publishing date: January 19, 2021 by Random House.

 

 

November Romance Wrap-up

Bit of a lighter romance reading month because I was also participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and the Thanksgiving Holiday.  I've also been really getting back into thrillers, so these romance wrap-ups might become monthly or bi-weekly.  I always update my Instagram when I finish a book with my star rating and a short review so give a follow if you'd like!

Love & Other Disasters - Terri Jones

This book follows Violet and J.P. who met through mutual friends one night, except Violet was introduced as Katia.  They had a one night stand and Violet left in the morning without leaving her number.  Embarrassed by the fact that she used a fake name and had a drunken night with a stranger, Violet plans to never see J.P. again.  However, he turns out to be the new CFO of the company she works at.  The book's summary made it seem like this would be a fun rom-com / office romance / mistaken identity type of story.  It wasn't.  I found the pacing of this to be off from the normal romance plot pacing. Violet and J.P had their main conflict around the 60% mark and I'm used to that conflict coming much later.  It seemed like the second half of the book was really more focused on Violet and J.P.'s personal growth in their own separate lives, which was fine, but wasn't what I was expecting.  The book deals with some pretty serious topics and while I appreciate the effort, I overall found it a little disappointing that these topics came  up when the two main characters were apart.  While I did like Violet and J.P. together - they were super cute and seemed to fall immediately into a feeling of being relaxed around each other - I had a hard time understanding some of their reactions.  J.P., when he finds out about Violet's secret, seemed to overreact to the situation.  Same when Violet finds out a secret that J.P. was keeping from her.  I could see the overall character arcs that Jones was going for, but it seemed like there were some situations that really got put into overdrive just to give something to contrast later interactions to.  I did like how involved the sister dynamic became to the plot and thought that was a really nice way to show Violet growing as a person.  Also - yay for characters going to therapy to try and better themselves and not being immediately fixed by falling in love!  This book reminded me of a much more tame, less dramatic version of The Executive by Winter Renshaw.  Overall, I thought the plot was pretty good, the characters worked well together, and the romance was cute, it just wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be based on the summary.

Thanks to NetGalley and Enchanted Publishing for the ARC.  Publishing date is December 9, 2020.

Take A Number - Amy Daws

This is the fourth book in the Wait for Me series and follows bakery owner Norah and silent investor Dean.  For some reason, didn't know this was part of a series when I picked it up but after looking through the summaries of the first 3 books, I think this book does a good job of bringing back previous characters into the plot of this book.  This book was checking all the boxes - fake dating! boss heroine who knows what she wants!  big declaration of love!  heroine and hero both have personal growth journeys! fun cast of side characters! - it was a super fun rom-com which is just what I was in the mood for.  Norah and Dean start fake dating so Norah's mom can get off her case about always being single.  They extend the fake dating to Dean can have a date to his friend's wedding in a month.  Fake dating turns into friends with benefits turns into real feelings turns into love.  I really liked the amount of conversation the two characters have with each other about what they want out of life and what they're looking for in a relationship (or lack thereof).  They are both 30 and they really felt realistic to that age.  The beginning of the book starts with Dean flirting with Norah at her bakery and we quickly learn that he's just a big flirt with a lot of people.  It was refreshing that once they were getting closer, that Norah didn't get super insecure - she got a little jealous and a little insecure at times, but nothing out of characters for a boss lady like her.  I do wish Dean's family drama was a little more developed and we got more scenes of him with his family to really understand why he feels the way he does about relationships.  

Puck Me Secretly - Odette Stone

This is the first book in the Vancouver Wolves Hockey series and follows player Max and assistant General Manager Rory.  The two meet as seatmates on a crashing plane and Max helps Rory through the whole ordeal.  The two share one steamy night together, then Max leaves without saying goodbye.  Turns out, Rory is the daughter (and new assistant GM) of the GM for the hockey team Max is now playing on.  Max has a troublesome past history and one of Rory's new duties is to keep him in line so their team can go all the way this year.  Max has his own secrets, but the more Rory gets to know him, the more she doesn't think he's what everyone says he is.  I loved this book - absolutely loved it.  Turns out, I really like sports romances when they aren't New Adult or about baseball. I really liked the slight turn of the trope where instead of the woman coming in to work and finding the hero is her new boss, it is the other way around.  I also appreciated how a good amount of the plot is this book revolves around Rory finding her place at work and showing people she's more than just the boss's daughter.  I really liked the characters of both Rory and Max and thought their chemistry together was off the charts.  I loved how they were so straightforward with each other about their feelings and fears - no miscommunications or any of that nonsense.  This book is told through Rory's POV and I did find myself wishing at times that we had the more traditional split POV of Rory and Max, but since both characters were so open and honest about their feelings, it didn't feel like anything was really missing.  I also found the supporting cast of characters to be really well developed.  

*Trigger warning for discussions of sexual assaults - no graphic details are given, but it is a pretty significant plot point to some characters so it does come up a few times in the book. 

Make Me Yours - Melanie Harlow

This is the second book in the Bellamy Creek series and follows Cheyenne and Cole.  He's a widowed single dad, local cop, brother's best friend, and her neighbor.  She's a kindergarten teacher at his kid's school and has had a crush on him since they were kids.  One drunken mishap of sending a dirty text she didn't mean to and the two start to reconcile their feelings for one another.  This is a real cute, feel good, friends to lovers story that I absolutely devoured!  I'll admit, brother's best friend isn't my favorite trope because I don't really like all the sneaking around and lying it usually entails.  However, in this case, I was so so happy that all parties involved were adults and when her brother catches on that the two have feelings for each other, he openly gives his blessing despite making Cole promise never to touch his little sister back when they were teens. I also really loved Cheyenne's characterization.  Sure, she's been in love with Cole for forever, but she also has a really good sense of what she wants out of her life and when Cole isn't able to give that to her, she is able to specifically tell him what she wants and why this isn't going to work for her and she walks away (which she does twice in the book!).  I thought Cole's emotional journey was really well done and I appreciate, as always, the role that therapy plays in the book.  I also loved that the happy ending didn't come when things were all of a sudden perfect, they were still working out some stuff but it didn't stop them from being together.  I do wish we would have gotten more development of the two characters earlier on in the book.  I wanted the book to start like 5 chapters sooner than it actually did.  It felt like we jumped right into the middle of their relationship beginning since we see from both POVs that they are into each other.  I wanted a bit more of the friendship dynamic to be built before the flirting started (which it basically does from page 1).  I also would love more scenes with just the guys hanging out.  I really liked their dynamic and how they talked about relationships and feelings together in a way that I haven't seen much in books.  I can't wait for book 3 which I'm predicting will be Moretti's story.

Nolan - Jane Henry

This is book 3 in the Dangerous Doms series.  The story follows Nolan, the youngest of the McCarthy brothers, and Sheena, an investigative reporter who has been hounding the McCarthy crime family.  While technically each book in the series is a standalone book, I would recommend reading them in order.  The first book gives a lot of details about how this crime network works and some of the different crime families in the area and the second book gives Nolan and Sheena's initial interactions.  Nolan and Sheena's love story was much more sweet than I was expecting.  The first two books have the older brothers marry someone they captured (book 1) and a tribute given from a rival clan (book 2) but while there was some pressure for Nolan and Sheena to be together, it wasn't as dark of a romance as the first 2 books. I was expecting this book to be darker, in a way, because from the glimpse of Nolan and Sheena's interactions in the second book, I was expecting their relationship to have much more turmoil than it ended up having.  I did really like Sheena's siblings and their complex family dynamic was an interesting contrast to the McCarthy clan.  I loved Nolan and Sheena together, but it did feel like this was going for an enemies to lovers trope but I felt we missed out on a lot of the enemies part since those happened off page in the other books.  I do find Sheena the most interesting heroine of the series so far and her and Nolan's final decision to be together reminded me sort of like a Prince Harry and Meghan Markle situation (but with much less family drama). While there wasn't a cliffhanger ending for the romance, there were some plot threads introduced right at the end of this book that I assume continue into the next which I normally don't love, but I've really enjoyed all of this series so far so I'm looking forward to reading the next book.

Left For Wild - Harloe Rae

This story follows Halder and Blakely as they try to survive being abandoned in the Canadian ilderness.  Blakely is a social worker at the prison where Halder lived for 5 years.  He is released early because of good behavior and wants her to be assigned to his case.  However, they are both kidnapped by the people who framed Halder and are dropped off in the middle of the snowy Canadian wilderness in October and these two strangers must work together to get out alive.  To be honest, this might be my most frustrating read of the year.  The premise sounded interesting - framed hero trying to prove his innocence, a bit of a forbidden romance, survival story - but most of those elements really fell flat.  This book felt like the author had the idea for her characters to fall in love while being out in the wilderness and then had to come up with some more plot points to try and expand the story to a full length novel.  This might have just been better off as a short erotica novella where two backpackers have to work together after a freak snowstorm or something like that.  The chemistry between Halder and Blakely was off the charts.  A lot of the reviews I've read call Halder their new favorite book boyfriend and I have to agree.  He's super smart, hot, protective, funny, charming, and sexy.  Blakely is also really spunky and the banter between these two was the best part of the book (which we luckily get a whole bunch of).  However, there was absolutely no conflict at all in the story, at least none that the characters have to deal with head on.  I can't get into specifics, but there's a lot of story developments into the non-romance plot lines that happen off page.  This gave the book, for me, a really low tension which was not what I wanted from a book where characters are abandoned in the wilderness by some sort of psychotic mob boss guy.  So, if you're looking for more of a romance/suspense book, this isn't for you.  But if you're looking for a really cute couple that bone in front of their campfire, then this just might be your next read.

Never Enough - Kelly Elliott

This is the first book in the Meet Me in Montana series and follows pro bull rider Brock and interior designer Lincoln.  Lincoln has recently escaped her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia to prove to her parents (and herself) that she can be successful without her father's influence.  Brock spends most of his time traveling the bull riding circuit while his young son is at home with his family.  After the sudden loss of his wife, Brock has never stepped foot in the home they shared.  Lincoln and her best friend Kaylee move in to Brock's old house and feelings that Brock didn't know he had start to rise to the surface.  But going forward with Lincoln will mean moving on from his past - something that Brock isn't sure he's strong enough to do.  Overall, I liked this book, but did find it a little dull.  I'm pretty sure it is just because I'm not the target demographic for books about single dads with young kids.  I did find all the bull riding parts interesting and thought it was an interesting look at small towns.  I really liked Lincoln and thought she was a super fun heroine.  She was strong and determined to succeed but I wish we would have gotten to see her really shine in her interior design business.  I wasn't quite sold on their relationship - it was a little too instalove for my tastes - but they did have a ton of chemistry coming off the page so that part was good.  I thought the surrounding cast of characters was really interesting and liked the family dynamic that was developed as well as the small town gossip tree.  There were a few plot points where the foreshadowing was done a little weird, in my opinion, and it felt like the reader should have already known about these incidents like this was book 2 in a series instead of book 1.  I did find myself much more interested in Kaylee's and Ty's relationship which is developed in book 2 of this series so I look forward to reading more.

The Taxidermist's Lover - Polly Hall

 Wow. Just wow.  This might just be my favorite read of the year.

 This book follows about a year in the life of  Scarlett and Henry. Henry is a taxidermist living in rural South West England who meets Scarlett one day on the beach.  Scarlett is much younger than him (at one point it was mentioned she was half his age but she is very much an adult), and the two have an instant connection.  Their relationship is passionate, loving, and pretty weird but the two seem to compliment each other perfectly.  Throughout the year, Scarlett learns more about Henry's taxidermy creations as well as his rival, Felix. The two make a promise to be soulmates for all eternity and that promise has far-reaching consequences that neither character could foresee. 

This book is categorized as horror and literary fiction which I think are the most fitting genre categories.  It is a hauntingly beautiful read and a very, very slow burn on the horror side.  The narrative style is from Scarlett's point of view talking to Henry which also feels like she's talking to the reader.  For example, the first line in the book is "Do you remember January as I do?" which was a bit more personal than I was expecting because not many books have their whole narrative using 'you'.  I quickly got used to it, but I found that this choice enabled me to get sucked right back into the book after having to put it down. This, in hand, really amped up the horror for me because I felt much more ingrained in the story than a regular 3rd person point of view - even though I know that Scarlett is talking to Henry and not me.  The overall prose was beautiful to read.  Hall's descriptions were very detailed and had some really interesting word choices.  The prose was where the literary fiction part really shined for me.  I usually don't vibe with literary fiction and find it to be very showy and boring but I think the fact that this beautiful prose was being used to describe such weird and horrific things really won me over.  I've seen in some reviews people comparing this book to Frankenstein, which I can see.  However, it really reminded me of The Yellow Wallpaper with the vivid descriptions that slowly get more and more disturbing as the narrative continues.  I read The Yellow Wallpaper in 2005 for my freshman English class so to have this book flash me back to that story fifteen years later was pretty cool.  I haven't read Catherine House, but from what I've been hearing about it, that also might be a somewhat similar vibe.

Where I think this book might lose some readers is the sort of lack of plot.  I primarily read thrillers, romance, and sci-fi, most of which are very plot heavy.  However, I would categorize myself as a character-driven reader and I think that's why I didn't mind that there wasn't too much going on plot-wise in this book.  Like I said earlier, the whole book takes place over the course of a year in the lives of Scarlett and Henry and most chapters are just them going about their daily business.  The real driving force behind the story is Scarlett and her feelings about Henry's taxidermy but that is a pretty gradual change.  There's one big moment at about the 85% mark where I had to go back and re-read what happened because even that big plot point was sort of hidden in this very languid narrative.  When I realized what had happened and what was about to happen, I was absolutely floored.  There were aspects and characters that got brought up in the course of the book that I wish got a little more explored like Henry's rivalry with Felix, but that is really based more on just my own curiosity more so than anything else.  Looking back, this book was written really tightly and had a lot of things happen but as I was reading, it didn't feel like a whole lot was going on outside of Scarlett's own mind.  I think some readers will get frustrated by Scarlett having questions about certain people or certain situations and she will just drop them when Henry doesn't want to talk about them.  

The horror elements in this book were perfectly done for my tastes.  It swings more toward body horror in that Henry starts making weird hybrid taxidermy creatures.  For most of the book (I'd say the first 75%), there isn't much horror except for a very eerie vibe and some very vivid descriptions of Scarlett and her feelings about these creatures.  However, in the last 25% of the book, the horror really ramps up and was, in my opinion, perfectly done.  The big moment I was talking about above was also when the body horror really took off and it reminded me a lot of the body horror in the manga Uzumaki.  It was just realistic enough to really get under my skin but at least in this book, there aren't any illustrations, just the reader's own imagination.  The horror really topped off at the end and I don't want to give any spoilers but the whole time reading up to it, I was thinking "oh no, oh no, this can't be where this is going, oh no, I think this book is going there, oh no, yep, it went there" and that's really the best way I can describe it. 

This book is definitely not for everyone.  I think the cover and title will do a good job of weeding out readers who are automatically put off by the idea of taxidermy.  This is a very atmospheric, slow burn, body horror, year in the life sort of story.  The prose is beautiful, haunting, and hypnotic.  There isn't much in the way of plot other than it being a story of two people living together out in the countryside and how their lives change over the course of a year.  This is Polly Hall's debut novel and she hit it out of the park.  I'll be looking forward to reading more of her works down the road. 

Overall, I absolutely loved this book.  The writing style isn't my usual go-to, but it was extremely atmospheric and really pulled me into the story right away.  It is a slow-burn horror novel which almost no horror at the beginning but Hall brings in the big guns at the end.  I find the overall tone and story to be very similar to The Yellow Wallpaper except much more explicit and with way more body horror.  I can't recommend this book more highly - it was fantastic!

272 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and CamCat Publishing for the ARC.  

Publication date is December 8, 2020.

The Stranger in My Bed - Karen King

 The Stranger in My Bed is a domestic psychological thriller revolving around married couple Freya and Paul.  As the result of a bad car accident, Paul has lost his memories from the past 2 years - his and Freya's entire married life.  The last thing he remembers is them coming back from their honeymoon.  Paul thinks he and Freya must have a great marriage since, as far as he remembers, they were head over heels in love with each other.  Freya, however, knows the truth of the past two years.  Living every day afraid of Paul's sudden bursts of anger and him lashing out at her for the smallest reasons. With his memories gone, Paul is the man Freya fell in love with and the question she must ask herself is: should she give him another chance?

The first thing I want to mention is a trigger warning for domestic violence.  There are multiple scenes, both in the present story as well as in flashbacks, where the domestic violence is on the page and we are experiencing it right alongside Freya.  It ranges from emotional, verbal, to physical abuse. I've never been in a domestic violence situation, but I didn't find the scenes to be overly gratuitous with the descriptions.  I didn't get the feeling that the scenes were included for shock value or anything like that.  The scenes really built up the tension in the story and were the cause of a lot of the internal tension in Freya.  From what I know from reading other real-accounts from domestic abuse survivors is that the infractions often start out small, and the perpetrator of the violence will then shower the other person with apologies, love, promises to never do it again - all of which are included in this book.  The book is split perspective mostly between Freya and Paul and the violence scenes were all from Freya's point of view so I never felt sympathy for Paul because we didn't hear his internal rationalizations for why he was doing these things to Freya.  And when Paul was apologizing to Freya, we could hear her internal thoughts about how conflicted she was about accepting his apology.  I think this book is a very powerful look at the cycle of domestic violence and how it can affect relationships of all kinds. I really wanted to mention this right at the beginning because the description of the book really doesn't do justice, I feel, to how much on the page abuse the reader will encounter.

I think the strongest part of this novel was, by far, the writing.  It was very clean and concise which is exactly how I like my thriller prose to be. The split POV was also really well handled, each character had their own voice and there were some times where I would be reading along, a new chapter would start, and I wouldn't pay attention to whose perspective we were in but I could tell within a few sentences.  I thought the additional POVs that we get sprinkled in throughout the book were also well done and they helped fill in some narrative gaps in the story in an easy and non-convoluted way.  The descriptions given of both people and places were just descriptive enough that I could get a picture in my mind without King going on and on for paragraphs at a time.  After re-reading a few passages, I think King does an excellent job of picking out key, grounding details to give to the reader and then she let's us fill in the finer details on our own. 

The biggest let down of the book for me was the thriller aspects, which was a bummer considering this was labeled a domestic psychological thriller which are normally home runs for me.  Now maybe people who haven't read as many thrillers as I have wouldn't have these issues with the book, and since all of this will be vague as to avoid spoilers, maybe take my opinions with a grain of salt.  So, first of all, it wasn't that the thriller aspects were bad or mishandled.  Quite the opposite, in fact, I will say I didn't see the final twist coming (I did call the earlier ones though) and the tension and sense of danger that Freya was in was very well crafted and kept me flipping pages as fast as I could.  However, I found the overall thriller aspects to be very surface level and if King had just turned up the dial a bit, I think this book could have been fantastic.  To start, I've read a few amnesia thrillers where the woman in the story is the one who lost her memories and she has to spend the whole book getting them back, only to find that someone she trusted the whole time was actually lying to her.  I thought that this book would be following that same sort of story line except it was the man who had lost his memory and it would be the woman's turn to get revenge or manipulate him in some way to her benefit since we know from the summary that their marriage is abusive.  This was not what happened and I was bummed about it, but, again, not everyone will have those expectations if they didn't read those previous books.  Also, there was some set up in Paul's POV for Freya to be an unreliable narrator as he questions her motives and what her true intentions are (which, if these thoughts had been paired with her actually manipulating him in revenge like I was expecting, would have been awesome).  However, the reader never sees Freya as anything other than 100% trustworthy.  We are immediately sympathetic to her situation and everyone in her life that we're introduced to supports her. She doesn't have any sort of mysterious past like we get with Paul so when Paul starts to question her motives, I basically immediately dismissed them and I never got a build up of tension trying to figure out who is right that I think the story was going for.  

The ending of this story I found really great.  Again, no spoilers, but any time the final twist in a thriller gets revealed and verbally react when I'm reading is a sign of an excellent twist. I especially liked the final twist because I had guessed that X happened, then X was dismissed in the narrative, but then the final twist was given and X turned out to be true, but not in the way I had initially thought.  There also was a good amount of resolution time after the final confrontation, which I always appreciate.  

Overall, a pretty decent surface level thriller with dual POV.  Decent twist on the amnesia-thriller trope. Writing was great, very tight, and kept the tension high throughout the book.  Trigger warning for on-page domestic violence.

295 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for providing the ARC.  This book will be published on November 23, 2020.

 

 

The Girls of Cemetery Road - Twyla Ellis

 This book surpassed my expectations, which is always a great thing.  It takes place in a small town in Texas on the edge of the Big Thicket.  Four childhood friends - the Sisterhood of Cemetery Road - spend their days riding bikes around the small town until one night when Libby goes missing.  She was never found and not long after Kit moves away.  Years later, Kit returns in order to fix up and sell her parent's old house.  Kit has never planned on returning to her part of the Thicket, but the Thicket has other plans.  Reconnecting with the remaining two members of the Sisterhood and brothers Colton and Jackson lead Kit on a journey that traverses the supernatural as well as the darkest parts of humanity.

I absolutely loved this book.  I found the summary to be a bit misleading in that I thought this would be more of a girl coming back to her small town and reconnecting with the people she left behind and maybe finding closure about her lost friend.  I was expecting a much more quiet book with themes about grief, friendship, and forgiveness.  I certainly was not expecting the scary supernatural elements that permeated the story.  The cover and the summary, in my opinion, do not do this story justice for just how entertaining and enthralling of a story it is.  There are consistent threats from the supernatural elements that Kit encounters and while none of them physically hurt her, they are terrifying.  The story does still cover themes of grief, friendship, and forgiveness, but with an undercurrent of the unknown forces that creep out of the Thicket at night.  There were a few scenes that had my heart racing and I had to put down the book twice when I was reading before bed because it was just a bit too much and my overactive imagination was getting away from me.  This book wasn't what I expected it to be - in the best way possible.

The relationship between Kit and the elderly Miss Maddie was my favorite relationship in the whole book.  Miss Maddie is Kit's neighbor who lives in a run down estate.  Miss Maddie is the definition of a crotchety old lady who wants nothing to do with Kit.  She sits on her front porch and threatens Kit for just walking by her house.  When Kit returns to town, she realizes that Miss Maddie doesn't have anyone looking out for her so Kit takes it upon herself to try.  Bringing Miss Maddie dinner and generally checking in on her, despite the verbal assault Miss Maddie slings, is Kit's new mission while she's fixing up her parent's house.  There were rumors back when they were kids that there was something off about Miss Maddie - or Mad Maddie McPhearson as she was called - and Kit slowly unravels the mystery of Miss Maddie.  Their relationship really highlights what kind of person Kit is and it helps Kit remember the good times of living in the town before tragedy struck.  While the two never completely get along, there is a small camaraderie that builds between the two women throughout the book.

There were two small things that irked me about the story.  The first is the hints along the way that nothing is exactly as it seems.  Now, normally with these kinds of spooky mystery books, I'm already questioning everyone's motives and actions and I think that is a standard expectation of the genre.  However, Ellis takes it one step further and will put lines like "if I had only known then" at the end of some scenes.  Which was just too heavy-handed for my liking and it broke my immersion in the reading because it made me go "okay, well I guess this will be important later, good to know" and by the third instance of this, I let go of my own guesses or suspicions on certain characters because the author didn't say anything about them so they must not be part of the mystery.  It just took some of the mystery away and took me out of the reading experience since those were really the only times the narrator had that sort of 20/20 hindsight.

The other small thing that I wasn't a fan of was how quickly the romance element moved at the end of the book.  I was a huge fan of the romance elements of the story overall, and felt that Kit and the love interest had a nice slow burn relationship building which was appropriate given all the spooky stuff happening and the fact that Kit wasn't sure if she was even staying in town or not for most of the book.  The love interest was also a very solid character who was Kit's rock for much of the story.  She leaned on him and he was always there to help her.  The romance wasn't the main story line by far so when the ending epilogue specifically focused on the romance, it didn't feel like the right tone to end the book on.

 Finally, the last part I want to mention that I really liked was how this book used To Kill A Mockingbird as a touchstone for some of the themes of the book.  The four girls read it in school and set out one summer to figure out who is their town's Boo Radley.  The characters call back to this a few times throughout the story and I think it was interesting to see the parallels between the stories.  The general mood and tone of the stories are somewhat similar with their small town southern charm and slower pace of life.  The theme of 'outsiders' is strong in this book and we see that theme explored from multiple perspectives which I found really interesting.  I find a lot of time classic novels are referenced in modern books but I haven't read many classics so I don't usually care about the references to them that much. But To Kill A Mockingbird had a big impact on me when we read it in 9th grade English class so it really deepened my reading experience of The Girls of Cemetery Road.

 

 

A fantastic book about grief, friendship, forgiveness, and outsiders.  Some very scary scenes that got my heart racing.  An exploration on the supernatural as well as the evils that lurk closer to home. Highly recommend!

344 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing the ARC.  This book was published on August 25, 2020.