That Night in the Woods - Kristopher Triana

This horror/thriller follows a group of friends 20 years after one Halloween night changed their lives forever.  When Scott Dwyer calls out of the blue to invite the fractured friend group back together, they are all a bit wary of returning to Redford.  But each of them - Jennifer, Corey, Traci, and Mark - agree to come and honor the memory of their recently passed friend, Steven.  As the group begin to reminisce about their teenage years, Scott breaches the vow they made to never speak of that one night.  
 

We get a good mix of characters - but I found them to be on the caricature side of the spectrum.  While the group hadn't spoken in many years, I didn't get a good feeling that they were ever really friends.  Even in the flashbacks, it felt like more of a gathering of acquaintances rather than an established friend group.  We get a brief introduction to most of the characters before they gather together but I wanted more time to establish their characters now so the comparison between then and now would be more clear.  There is some substantial character change during the ending climax but since I didn't get a good sense of the characters to begin with, this change didn't hit me the way I think it was meant to.

The horror elements in this were spectacular and there were so many chilling moments.  There are 2 timelines in this story and the past timeline, where we are seeing what happened that night in the woods, reminded me of All Hallows by Christopher Golden.  We get the creepy people in the maybe haunted forest and a group of friends who are trying to be logical about it all but also aren't sure what they are experiencing.  There's also a fair amount of gore in the last 25% or so of the read which I wasn't really expecting but I think worked well given the escalation with the plot.  

I think the standout element by far is the tension Triana was able to craft.  While the dual timelines do alternate, we get pretty big chunks at one time.  There isn't a whole lot of back and forth that would normally help to build tension through the structure of the book so the meat of the story really needed to do the heavy lifting.  As we get more reveals, the tension amps up because each reveal has some pretty far-reaching consequences.  These aren't just "oh, X did Y" type of reveals.  It is "X did Y which means that A and B ended up C which would mean..." type of reveals.  There's also a good amount of interpersonal tension with the friend group and the fallout of that night in the woods.  We get multiple POVs so tension is built that way as well where we see certain characters and their internal thoughts or desires. 

The ending lost me, which is a real shame.  Plot-wise, the ending was actually was a little off the rails but in a way that I usually like.  However, I found the plot development to clash with the character development.  There were certain characters that felt like they had complete personality shift in the last 30 pages or so which didn't work for me.  I also found a bit of the explanation/reveal of the ending to be a bit info-dumpy in a way that made it feel rushed.  Like we could have had this information woven into the scene a little more but instead it felt like the reader was being pushed toward the ending before I was ready for it.  

Overall, I enjoyed parts of the story but it didn't quite come together perfectly for me.  Fantastic horror elements and tension building but the characters and ending ended up feeling a little misaligned. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Cemetery Dance Publications for the ARC.

Expected publication date is October 7, 2023

Romance Wrap Up September 1-15

How to Fake Date a Vampire - Linsey Hall

This is the second book in the Charming Cove series and follows witch-in-training, Emma, and vampire duke, Alaric. In order to earn a spot at her coven, Emma is in charge of planning the annual Beltane Ball.  The biggest problem is trying to convince Alaric to let her host it at his estate - his famously private estate.  Lucky for Emma, Alaric needs a fake girlfriend to show his grandmother after a disastrous break-up.  As the two spend time together preparing for the upcoming Ball, they find that maybe they have more in common than they initially thought.  This is falling into the 'not for me' category.  I didn't really connect with the characters or the writing style.  I found Emma and her whole plot to feel more YA than I was expecting which just isn't my vibe.  This YA-ish plot also clashed with the more adult romance elements.  I wanted way more from Alaric than we got and I never really got a good handle on his character or backstory. I did really love the world of Charming Cove and all the different types of magic or magical creatures we get to see. Also, Penelope the skunk was far and away my favorite part of this book. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Bonnie Doon Press for the ARC.  Publication date was August 31, 2023

The Fiancee Farce - Alexandria Bellefleur

This sapphic romance follows Tansy and Gemma as they enter into a fake engagement.  Tansy, sick of the constant questions about her love life, fabricates a relationship with a fictional Gemma.  Then, when at her cousin's wedding, the real Gemma finds out about Tansy and their supposed relationship.  Good thing for both of them that Gemma needs to be married in a few months in order to inherit her grandfather's publishing company. What starts as a purely business arrangement inevitably turns real. This was absolutely fantastic and has solidified Bellefleur as an insta-read author for me.  I was fully invested in Tansey and Gemma as individual characters and their own journeys but also loved to see them get together.  They were such a good example of the opposites attract trope where they aren't caricatures or it isn't completely unbelievable that they would actually like being together.  We have a great cast of side characters and I liked how the marriage of convenience plot was used.  The chemistry between Tansy and Gemma was fantastic and built up believably as they spend more time together. 

The Plus One - Mazey Eddings

 

This is the third book in the A Brush With Love series and follows childhood enemies Indira and Jude. Weeks before her brother's wedding, Indira finds herself newly single and needs a place to stay - obviously her brother's house is her first choice.  When she arrives and sees Jude is also staying there, the two pick up where they left off with the verbal sparring.  However, it isn't exactly like when they were younger as their own internal and external struggles have left their marks on both of them.  Their fake dating agreement quickly turns real as the two of them find comfort in their shared history. Both Indira and Jude have their own mental health struggles and these struggles were the forefront of the story.  I loved how Eddings integrated the mental health aspects into every aspect of their lives and relationship.  Indira and Jude were such complex characters on their own and I loved when they did finally get together how we could see their relationship morph. The banter between them is perfection and we get a good amount of interaction from the cast of side characters - including the previous couples.  I did want a little more of Indira and Jude finding out more about each other.  They were antagonistic toward each other for so long, I wanted to see more of them turning that around.  

TW/CW: PTSD from medical procedures, parental abandonment

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC.  Publication date was April 4, 2023

Let Him In - William Friend

 

This horror novel follows Alfie and his twin daughters - Sylvie and Cassia - 9 months after his wife's accidental death.  What starts as an assumed nightmare of the twins seeing a man in their room evolves into a shared imaginary friend, Alfie reaches out to his wife's sister, Julia.  Psychologist Julia initially sees nothing out of the ordinary about the girls' behavior but as she spends more time with the grieving family, memories of her own childhood start surfacing.  As the situation with Alfie and the girls start escalating - including hallucinations and physical danger - this friend might be more than imaginary after all. 

TW/CW: death of a spouse, death of a parent, suicide, child endangerment, child neglect, domestic violence, miscarriage, grief

The atmosphere of this whole read is spot on.  The book opens with heavy grief and even the creepy stuff gets circled back to grief.  Yeah, the girls and their imaginary friend are a little weird and something feels off, but they're just grieving the way children do. Or that Alfie is overly sensitive due to his own grief.  This is reflected perfectly with the family being basically self-isolated in this old and grand home. As we learn more about the backstory of the home and the events that happened in the past, we can't help but see how that could be impacting the current day story. I'd categorize this read as a pretty quiet, creepy read.  We do have some moments of action, but for the most part we're in solid creepy kid story territory. 

The horror elements were so delicately balanced, I was surprised that this was a debut. I think it would have been easy for this type of story to get over the top with the horror.  And while that might have worked very well also, this sort of more subdued, gently escalating horror was great.  Creepy kids are almost always a win and them being twins really was the cherry on top.  I liked how we get a mix of them being their usually creepy selves - like seemingly able to communicate telepathically - but then the line gets crossed and now there's maybe something supernatural going on.  It felt like the type of horror that I could very well imagine happening in real life where it is just unsettling and strange enough that it makes you wonder but if you aren't a believer in the supernatural/paranormal then you also can come up with explanations for the events.

 As far as characters go, this felt very much like a snapshot in time.  The majority of the story takes place over a 3 day span, but we do get some flashbacks as well.  This short time span didn't give a whole lot of time for much character development.  We also see the characters being stagnant due to grief, which also doesn't change a whole lot over 3 days.  Friend does a good job of giving us details of these characters through their actions and reactions with other characters.  We alternate POVs between Alfie and Julia so we do get their internal dialogue during their chapters. What I absolutely loved is that the children actually read like children.  They weren't overly precocious or intellectual for their age and the creepy kid factor then hits that much harder when the kids read as realistic.

I think the ending might be a hit or miss with readers.  I found it toeing the line of being frustratingly ambiguous in the same way that the ending of Inception was.  We spend this whole book following these characters and seeing the escalation of something that may or may not be supernatural.  Then it just sort of ... ends.  We do get a epilogue that flashes forward a few months and I found that to also end on sort of an ambiguous note. I think what saved this ending for me was that we have enough textual evidence to support the reading in either direction.  I'm certainly swaying in one direction but I can absolutely see the argument for the other reading being the 'real' ending. I also found this ambiguous ending to work well as this theme of trying to figure out what is real or not comes up a lot throughout the book.

Overall, this was a great atmospheric, creepy read.  The horror elements were balanced well and the ambiguous ending was pulled off well. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press.  Expected publication date is October 3, 2023