Category: Horror

Kingdom of the Wicked

By Kerri Maniscalco. Pub date: 10/27/2020

Five Stars! ***** Best enjoyed on a fall day when you’re not too hungry or thirsty–there are a lot of super delicious food references in this one, along with some seriously hot love interest moments.

Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria work in their family’s restaurant in a village located on the coast of Sicily. They are also witches, called strenghe, who live secretly amongst the superstitious populace of their home, carefully avoiding suspicion and the witch hunters that may follow it. Emilia is content in her place in the restaurant’s kitchens where her family creates some of the best loved dishes in the village. That is until she stumbles across her twin sister’s desecrated body in the basement of the local Catholic church, her heart viciously removed from her body. All contentment disappears as vengeance begins to take hold of her heart. In her search for her sister’s killer, she invokes some forbidden magic, accidentally summoning Wrath, one of the very Princes of Hell and part of the court of the Kingdom of the Wicked that she has been warned against since she was a child. However, Wrath, despite being pissed that she has entrapped him, is more than willing to help her. As they delve deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, it seems that Vittoria was not the first witch whose heart has been stolen, and Emilia may be the next target. That is, if Wrath doesn’t steal her heart first.

https://beyondwords.life/sicily-dreamy-adventure-along-coast/

I loved the setting of this book. It’s not often that a YA is written that sets itself in a Mediterranean country, and just hearing “seaside village in Sicily” invoked visions of weathered brick buildings and cool blue waters. It was the perfectly contrasting backdrop for a dark mystery with a tense, delicious romance. Maniscalco is truly an artist when it comes to building three-dimensional characters with truly deep emotions and motivation for revenge as well as grief, loss, betrayal, and love. I could practically feel the heat coming from my kindle in some scenes and found myself gripping the edges during others.

A mark of a truly good book is how lost you can get in what is happening. When I finally came up for air, I was shivering in my hammock and it was practically morning. That should alone should drill home how good I thought this was, and I am so excited for this October!

Thank you to Netgalley and Little Brown for the advanced copy in exchange for this review ❤

Horror Mystery Survival

The Wild

By Owen Laukkanen, pub date September 14, 2020

Best enjoyed outside where you can smell fresh air and dirt–even better if you can surround yourself with forest.

Dawn messed up. Dawn messed up bad enough that her mother and her step dad showed up at her middle aged drug dealing boyfriend’s house to pick her up and drag her off the Out of the Wild, a program for wayward teens. Now, Dawn is experiencing some of the toughest situations she’s ever had to deal with…at least the ones she’s willing to talk about.

Along with other messed up kids like her and int he company of two counselors, it looks like Dawn is going to be hiking non-stop over the course of the next three months until she can prove that she is responsible and respectful and has turned her life around. Maybe it will give her the opportunity to confront ‘WHAT SHE DID,’ the thing that started her down this path in the first place.

When things go horribly awry, Dawn is not only going to learn–quickly–about what she is capable of and what she is willing to do in order to survive, she will also need to learn what Doing the Right Thing really means if she has any intention of living with herself.

I’m a sucker for survival stories, especially those where someone who is completely unprepared to get lost in the woods does exactly that. Extra points when something nefarious or untoward is occurring at the same time. So many extra points. I really dug this whole story and I practically gobbled it all down in one sitting.

It reads as a very matter of fact guidebook without losing its flavor. Even with the obvious foreshadowing–and I mean, the author literally tells you that something bad is going to happen and points out mistakes that the characters make–there were still some surprising twists and turns. It gets very Lord of the Flies-y while also maintaining the dark, urgent, survival-driven vibe of the movie “The Edge.”

Laukkanen did an amazing job of describing the landscapes and scenes, the struggles, aches, and pains, and even the scent of the very air. You are sucked right into the story, experiencing it right next to the characters and embracing the exhaustion, excitement, and fear as if you are there. Highly recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for the advanced reader copy, provided in exchange for an honest and fair review.

Fantasy Horror

Ruthless Gods

by Emily A Duncan. Release Date 4/7/2020

3 Stars. Best enjoyed slowly, like a square of deep, dark chocolate.

Picking up the pieces left behind from the events in Wicked Saints and working to end the war between Kalyazin and Tranavia (one way or another), Nadya and Serefin find themselves at the brink of something big, dark, and more dangerous than they have ever done.

Serefin’s very sight, although not good to begin with, is changed after his experience in the temple and is now hosting a fallen god within him, while Nadya has been cut completely away from her gods and has been imbued with a strange, dark power that has scarred her hand and left her off-balance. However, despite these struggles, there is work to be done.

Someone in the court is trying to usurp Serefin’s throne.

Nadya must reconnect with her gods so she can fulfill her divine purpose as a cleric.

And the Black Vulture must be confronted before he destroys the world.

Overall I liked the story and I want to know how it ends. There were some very enjoyable parts throughout, such as the descent into the Black Vulture’s layer as well as the later portions of the book when they reach the forest where all hell breaks loose. The plot slowed a little in the middle but otherwise was intriguing. However, I felt that this one suffered a little from the problem that sometimes happens with constantly switching POVs where one is taken out of the story and has a hard time reconnecting. Because of this, it took me longer than I would like to admit to finish it. There are also portions later in the book where it feels like huge swaths of certain character’s stories are missing and it’s very disjointing, although it is certainly plausible that that is the whole point. The last third of the book takes on an interesting, ethereal quality after all. Also, if you’re looking at this for the romance aspect, prepare for that to fall a little short and just enjoy the ride.

I would recommend this to anyone who has read Wicked Saints. I think the story is still a good continuation, and it sets readers up for an explosive third installment!

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for a fair review.

Fantasy Horror

Wicked Saints

Post author By Lady Nightwolf
Post date January 21, 2020

By Emily Duncan

4.5 Stars. Best enjoyed on a cold and blood-laced winter evening.

In a war between blood magic and the will of the gods, who will triumph?

A war has been fought for years between Tranavia and Kalyazin, a war that pits the divine against the profane and heretical. Two powerful people on opposing sides want nothing more than to end this war and stop the bloodshed.

Nadiya is a cleric of Kalyazin, chosen by the gods as their representative on the earthly plane, both as the wielder of their magic and their weapon in a war against divinity.

Seredin is the high prince, heir to the Tranavian throne, and one of the strongest blood mages in the army leading the charge against Kalyazin.

Then a mysterious boy emerges from the shadows with his own monsters and many secrets. He is about to upend everything they think they know about the world. Are their goals perhaps more in line then they think?

Okay. So that was intense. I’m not always the biggest fan of audiobooks with multiple narrators, they tend to take me out of the story a little. Actually, I don’t usually like multiple POV books for that reason. However, it didn’t even matter. I read a good chunk of the book and listened to the rest. I practically finished it the day I started. Not only did I listen at work, I listened at every opportunity I had. Driving? Wicked Saints. Working? Wicked Saints. Lunch? I’m skipping. I’ll just stay in my office and listen to Wicked Saints. I am so excited that I have the ARC for Ruthless Gods because you bet your butt I’m reading it this weekend. I was so invested in the character’s individual stories the entire time. I didn’t have to ride that usual “ugh, when is this POV going to be over—I honestly couldn’t care less what this person is doing” rollercoaster. When the next chapter came I was like “darn, but Oh yay! What’s Seredin up to?” Yeah, it was that good.

The world that has been built is relatively simple and feels medieval. It’s war-ravaged from the long standing holy war between Tranavia and Kalyazin, and the magic that courses through the world is an interesting character all its own, fighting between darkness and light. That’s the biggest mystery throughout the entire thing. Where does the magic come from, and where SHOULD it come from? Is it really a divine creation or is it something inherent to the people who wield it? We just don’t know…but we’re getting somewhere!

Duncan is an awesome author. She really has a talent for breathing life into her characters and exploring the dark war that happens within each of us. Are we good or evil? Is the divide even great enough to be measurable? What even defines the two?

Contemporary Fiction Horror Mystery Romance

The Shape of Night

By Tess Gerritsen, Pub date 10/1/2019

4 Stars. Best enjoyed at night. Alone.

Tess Gerritsen has been one of my favorite authors for the last 15 years, so I was super excited to be approved for this one–thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for the below fair review!

Ava is a food writer who trades a few months in Boston for a new backdrop in Brodie’s Watch, a large, beautiful rental house on the coast of Maine. It’s the perfect place to finish her latest book on New England coastal cuisine, and also far enough away to try to escape the secrets that have haunted her since New Year’s Eve. However, it soon becomes clear that she is not the only resident haunting the stately home perched on the seaside cliff outside of Tucker’s Cove, Maine. It seems that the master of the house, Captain Jeremiah Brodie, also walks the halls of the historic home, and has his sights set on being more than just a spectral presence to Ava. However, it soon becomes apparent that there are dangerous forces at play both inside and outside of the cliffside estate…and that Ava is not the only person in Tucker’s Cove with deadly secrets.

The Shape of Night is a much different fare than I am used to coming from Gerritsen, but it was nonetheless a wonderful escapist read. It was part mystery/thriller, part paranormal romance. As always, she wrote characters that were well fleshed-out, places that I felt I could step into, and described smells and flavors that lifted themselves off the pages. I found my mouth watering at some of the descriptions of the food that Ava created for her book. There are other scenes that are delicious, hot, and completely unrelated to roasting meats and simmering soups. I also really felt for Ava. Her need for redemption for her heinous secret was palpable, and it was clear that no matter how much she tried to bury herself beneath empty wine bottles and distance herself from the place it happened, she couldn’t escape the pain on her own, and, not to give too much away, the house seemed to be well aware of that fact.

Gerritsen also proves that she remains a master of mystery–there were so many different questions that needed to be answered that it was enough to keep the reader guessing at every turn until the epilogue. The imagery lent a creepy, fall-worthy vibe to the entire story, absolutely perfect for the season.

Horror Mystery Romance

The Widow of Rose House

by Diane Biller. Pub Date 10/08/2019

3 Stars. Best enjoyed with a hot cup of tea in a lavish sitting room. Beware of unexplained drafts.

Returning to New York, recently widowed Alva Webster finds herself in a hotbed of undeserved scandal at the hands of her less-than-kind late husband. Alva is bent on making her own small nest egg. She buys the abandoned–and notoriously haunted–Liefdehuis, planning to renovate it and write an accessible book about interior design for both the upper class and growing middle class. On her first outing with her publisher, Alva is approached by Professor Sam Moore, a famous inventor, who wishes to investigate the infamous paranormal goings-on in Liefdehuis. Alva is not one to fall prey to such superstition and–politely–declines the newly-smitten Professor Moore’s offer, unaware that Sam is not one to quit in his scientific pursuits. However, when Alva’s contractors flee Liefdehuis, refusing to return until something is done about the ghost, Sam’s offer seems to be the only way she will be able to pursue her dream of being published. As Alva and Sam search for the truth behind the haunting of Liefdehuis, they also find themselves falling in for one another. Unfortunately, Alva’s dark past comes back to haunt her in an entirely different way, and Sam finds that the fight for Alva’s heart is fraught with its own kind of ghosts.

Overall, I like this book. Not loved, but liked. There are definitely things I loved about it, and other things I was sore about, like the fact that the ghost doesn’t come into play as often as it should given the description (although other ‘ghosts’ certainly haunt the pages). There is also a section of about 30% of the book that felt drawn out to me. Way more than it had to be. Like to the point where I almost DNF’d. It was like a section of road under construction, like there was a struggle to provide some context and back story. It felt like a stretch of road under construction and it was rough, but I slowed down a bit until I worked through it.

Some of the things I loved most about it were Sam and the Moores. There’s something about fictional Sams that always has gotten to me. Not ‘real’ Sams, just fictional ones. Samwise Gamgee, Sam Winchester…now Sam Moore, the somewhat absent-minded professor trope that we all adore. Smart, sweet, somewhat socially naive, and protective Sam, who falls fiercely in love with Alva. He was so persistent yet also remained very aware of her autonomy and respected her wishes, no matter how much it broke his heart. I liked Alva as well, but moreover because I (like many people who have seen a bad past relationship) get where she came from with a lot of her decisions. She felt that being selfish with her problems rather than sharing them was the most selfless thing to do, even knowing how good they were together (spoiler: both in and out of the sheets).

And then the Moores! Remember that 30% of the book where I was getting so bored I almost DNF’d? Well, in those times of darkness and doubt, I thought of Sam’s family, the intelligent, scientific-minded, chaotic, loving, and fun Moores, and I needed…well…more! I truly hope that there is another book starring one of Sam’s family members, Maggie especially, although Henry and Benedict should also get their moment! They were honestly the highlight.

Overall, I did like The Widow of Rose House, especially the last half.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions written above are my own!

Horror

Small Spaces

By Katherine Arden.

4 Stars. Best enjoyed with a handful of trail mix on a chilly fall evening

Olivia—who prefers Ollie–was different a year ago before she lost her mom. Since then, she quit chess club and most social activities and has retreated into books. On her way home one day after an incident at school involving another girl being teased and a rock thrown well and true at one of the purported instigators by Ollie herself, she stumbles upon a distressed woman in the woods. As the woman holds a small black book over Lethe Creek, Ollie snatches the endangered tome from her and brings the mysterious book home. The story it tells is a strange one involving someone known as the Smiling Man, an entity that makes deals with those who are desperate in exchange for service. The fantastical tale seems to follow her on a class trip the next day, and when the bus breaks down on their way home and the world starts to turn sideways, Ollie, accompanied by her classmates Coco and Brian, needs to use all of her knowledge, wits, and cleverness to get her and the rest of her classmates back to their own world and out of the grip of an entity that seems to have jumped right from the pages of the book she rescued from a watery grave.

I truly loved Arden’s first foray into children’s fiction. I found the team of young preteens to have some serious moxie and I loved how they got to know one another and use their hidden strengths and talents to survive in a mysterious world where they were hunted by scarecrows that turned out to be more than that. It was a story of love and acceptance and moving forward through grief. The characters had depth and Ollie was my spirit animal and is exactly the kind of kid I hope for someday. Ollie’s dad was also such a cool character with his love of crafts, baking, color, and amazing and corny dad jokes. I really grew to love Ollie’s companions, Coco and Brian, as well. Their adventures take them from being three very different acquaintances to three members of a survival team who grow to care for one another as friends. The alternate world that they slide into is interesting and well built, and the ending is very surprising.

I truly recommend this book to all young girls as a reminder that being smart and brave can make all the difference and to never let anything take their spark or make them go against their moral compass.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Penguin Group in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Horror

The Toll

By Cherie Priest

2 Stars. Best enjoyed on a hot, humid day with a cool glass of iced tea and a sense of mystery and a lot of patience.

Titus and Melanie Bell are on their way to their honeymoon in the Okefenokee swamp when they reach a strange bridge that is entirely out of place. In trying to cross the bride, something strange occurs and Titus wakes up in the middle of the road and there is no sign of his new bride. With no recollection of what happened beyond the strange trip over the bridge, Titus must stay in the nearby and strange town of Staywater while the local police try to piece together what might have happened to his wife. However, Titus wants to figure out the strange occurrences that have taken his wife from him as well, and the residents of Staywater know more than what they are telling him.

Although the story was alright, there were some spots that were so slow that I really considered DNFing it, but I was determined to know the answer to all the mysteries. The town of Staywater itself was a neatly situated intersection of the supernatural, paranormal, and forgotten, dying backwater town. The characters were interesting and had depth, especially the witchy cousins. There were so many main characters and stories going on at once, though, that at times it was enticing and others it was way too much and it felt like the wrong stories were being focused on. Although I was glad I stuck around to the end and the ‘final showdown,’ it still felt sort of lackluster and unsatisfying to me.

Not everything about it was unreadable, though. The best part of the book were the parts with the cousins. I really wanted more of them. Their banter was great, their history was pretty cool, and they reminded me of the mythological Fates from Greece. The town was also very cool, especially the abandoned places and the part of the story regarding the ‘dollhouse’. I felt more could have been done with it. The majority of the other main characters weren’t very likeable and with the exception of Dave, whom I grew to like a lot more as the story progressed. Cameron was mostly a whiney teenager, though I did enjoy his evolution near the end. Titus kind of sucked and I definitely didn’t get the feeling he liked his new wife, let alone cared if she showed back up. It seemed like it was more of an obligation than anything else. I was really hoping he would show more depth and feeling, but by the end I just kind of hoped he would get taken by whatever was controlling the bridge.

Ultimately, the real stars of this book are Staywater, Daisy, and Claire. The rest is just background noise.

I received an advanced copy from Netgalley and Macmillan TOR/Forge in exchange for a fair and honest review.