Hello, Tartlets! I'm so excited to be part of the blog tour for Hidden Pictures. Because I seriously loved this book. (Whew! What a relief. It would've been totally awkward to be part of a blog tour for a book I hated.) Billed as "The Haunting of Hill House meets The Perfect Nanny," this supernatural thriller by Jason Rekulak surpassed all the expectations I had for it. I ripped through Hidden Pictures in just two days. TWO DAYS! Every spare...
The Bone Houses has one of the best first lines I've ever read: "The evening air smelled pleasantly of a fresh grave." I mean, come on. HOW CAN YOU NOT GET SUCKED IN BY THAT? Talk about imagery. Take notes, fellow writers. This is just one example of author Emily Lloyd-Jones's beautiful writing in this young adult historical fiction/ fantasy / horror novel mash-up. Lloyd-Jones has mastered the art of being evocative enough to immerse you in the...
The Invisble Life of Addie La Rue was another different type of read for me: fantasy. This creative story by V.E. Schwab is rich and complex; it’s detailed and emotional; it’s sweet and exciting. There are SO many things going on in this behemoth of a novel that it’s hard to pinpoint what to talk about. Let’s start at the beginning, which I actually didn’t love. The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue is slow to start. There’s a lot of...
Umm, could someone please explain A House at the Bottom of a Lake to me? Because I sure as hell don’t get it. Admittedly, that could just be me. This could be another Bunny situation going on, where I’m just not existential enough to understand what I just read. This novella by Josh Malerman (of well-deserved Bird Box fame) is a horror story…kinda. Two teenagers row out to some hidden lake where they go swimming and discover an actual...
I'm not sure how I stumbled across The Girl Who Died; I think author Ragnar Jonasson blurbed another scary book that I'd read and loved. I thought, if I loved that book, I'd probably love books by this author, too. The Girl Who Died, despite its off-putting title, was a really enjoyable read. It's brimming with tension and atmopshere, suspense and mystery. Main character Una spontaneously accepts a teaching job in the ultra-remote Icelandic...
I never really think of December as a spooky time of year, but author Cassandra Parkin manages to change that with her book The Winter's Child. This suspenseful novel is full of twists and turns, ghostly premonitions and ghastly visions as main character Susannah waits for her long-lost -- and possibly deceased-- son to return to her on Christmas Eve. Susannah's a frustrating main character. She's clearly grieving and needs mental help, but...
N0S4A2 is a Christmas book in the way that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. It's a horror novel that just so happens to be centered around Christmas. There are all the entrancing, alluring elements of the holidays that we love – carols, trees decorated with oranaments, the smell of gingerbread in the air – but author Joe Hill doles out each charming tidbit with a sinister twist that morphs the innocent into something incredibly dark and...
I love discovering new authors in supernatural fiction, and The Voices falls perfectly into this genre. This story starts off like most haunted house novels -- a happy couple moves into a too-good-to-be-true lovely old house that turns out to be creepyAF. But that's where anything expected in The Voices ends. Right away, an unsettling feeling grows in your gut that this isn’t going to be your typical haunted house – you know, ghosts moving...
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Mexican Gothic is the latest bestseller to fall into the DNF pit. Let me start off this book review by saying that I'm not only disappointed by how much I didn't enjoy this Gothic suspense -- but I'm very surprised by it. Mexican Gothic made HUGE waves last year among bookstagrammers and book bloggers, for its book cover alone! Which is, admittedly, gorgeous. A creepy, crumbling Victorian mansion in a remote...
I uttered "What the fuck?" an unprecedented number of times while reading Bunny. That’s pretty much the only reaction you can have to this novel by Mona Awad. It's a complete What the actual eff??? ride from beginning to end. Bunny takes place at a prestigious art school. There’s a pack of hoity-toity, grad school women there who behave like middle schoolers; they roam around in a pack, affectionately calling each other “Bunny” like...
