4 Stars - Blog Posts

The Smell Of Other People's Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This story is about four characters who, given their individual upbringings and struggles, all end up helping each other through their problems. I didn't expect the story to go how it went but I was definitely not disappointed. The characters were all very real and their stories were super interesting and somewhat relatable. I suggest this book to anyone that likes to read about people's problems, how they get through them, and how they can affect others.

The Year We Fell Apart by Emily Martin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I loved this book. The author did a great job of giving the main characters very easy to follow yet quite complex backgrounds and personalities. I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline and was very satisfied by the ending. I recommend this book to anyone that likes a nice YA novel and/or the author Sarah Dessen.

The Cellar by Natasha Preston ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book did a great job at keeping my attention all the way until the end but I can’t say that I like how the story itself flowed very well. I feel like the author rushed into the situations a bit early into the book and that there possibly could’ve been a bit more detail as to how the character was doing during the five month skip about half way through. All in all though, it was a pretty good book and I’m glad I read it. I totally recommend it to anyone who likes an intriguing story (of any kind).

RUN MAN RUN by CHESTER HIMES (REVIEW)

quickly: a witness in a cold-blooded murder case is stalked and hunted by the gunman (1960’s new york city vice patrol / a bigot with a badge / working the night shift / automats and lunch counters / crossing 110th street / crossing the blue line / cats vs. mice / “did he use a silencer or was he silenced” asked oprah / going by way of Fat Sam / double crossing and double-talking / hot head with a hot rod / stairwell chases / parking lot shootouts / man against the world).

Jimmy is a Harlem youngster working nights at a cafeteria factory when a drunken maniac detective is overcome by white psychosis and kills all of his co-workers in cold blood. By a stroke of amazing grace, he survives the attack, but his survival places him in the crosshairs of a certified psycho who is set on eliminating all witnesses.

Don’t pick this up if you aren’t ready to sprint. This one-day read is a fast-paced NYC crime thriller full of race-based angst, socioeconomic division, and catchy 50s and 60s one-liners. Reading between the lines of this action-packed thriller, you’ll find poignant observations on race and interesting opinions on gender. Add a tablespoon of sex, jazz, and liquor, and you’ve got yourself a good time.

★ ★ ★ ★ Short, fast, and loud.

THE EMPUSIUM by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: a sickly young engineering student hopes to find healing in a scenic mountain valley village where mysteries abound (gentleman’s houses / noises in the attic / spying eyes / fear of being seen / sex dolls and shrooms / wine at dinner time / men who think women are a different species / obscuring the vision, to see more clearly / long walks around the park / those looked upon by venus and jupiter / the soul as the weakest point / the inferior superiority of men).

The story opens like a Wes Anderson film, set in 1913 Poland, in a valley between two mountain ranges with air that is mythologized to cure the infamous tuberculosis. Before our dear Mieczysław can be cured, the malaise of life at the Gentleman’s House (where men smoke cigars with their weakened lungs, and talk at quite some length about the “lesser” minds of women) becomes a mire of shadows and secrets waiting to be unraveled. As expected, this idyllic 1900s mountain town is more than it appears to be. At night, after many men have imbibed in the psychoactive “schwärmerei”, the landscape seems to stare back at the onlookers. Every fall, men die violent and mysterious deaths, as if the surrounding forest is eating them and spitting them back out. As the summer season ends, Mieczy’s anxious concerns of being ‘seen’ intensifies.

★ ★ ★ ★ Mysteriously seductive.

Slowly, just as calmly as summer gives way to the decaying color bomb of autumn, this slow burn of a “health resort horror story” ends in a flush of fire. What begins as a medical retreat for our anxious and gentle-spirited protagonist evolves into an awakening of sorts upon the discovery of a cure for an ailment Mieczy had long been prepared to disregard as a permanent inconvenience. Mieczy will discover something that no amount of men’s postulations could destroy, and it is fantastic to watch. The astrology tidbits are delicious, and always a delightful discovery to happen upon when reading Olga’s work (as in The Books of Jacob, and Drive Your Plow…). The world of this story is both scenic and seductive… like a carnivorous plant that slowly digests you as you are hypnotized by its beauty. 

You walk with Mieczy up the steep incline of a forested mountain, always wondering where the path is taking you, until suddenly you reach the peak and overlook the edge at the marvelous view down below. A soft, then hard, autumnal horror story with an ending that would make J. K. Rowling’s eyes bulge as she combusts and then evaporates. 

THE SALT GROWS HEAVY by CASSANDRA KHAW (REVIEW)

quickly: an everlasting mermaid and her undead companion must defeat a village of evil children and the magicians that control them (why do immortals fall in love? / children of the corn / bad things come in threes / grotesquery and gore galore / men and their ignorance of anything not man / the hunt / taming by mutilation / winter ice on scaled skin / what’s in a heart? / unmasking the wizard / remembering forgotten powers / regenerating lost parts / the essence of a man is a ball of shit in his gut).

What a strange, romantic, bloodthirsty fantasy this was. A sea siren is siphoned from the sea by a Prince, stripped of her teeth, her voice, and forced to be a tradwife. Two daughters are born from this inhumane union of land and sea, and their mother watches expectantly as her daughters devour the Prince’s kingdom bite by bite. Walking over the piles of bodies her daughters have made in their hunger, she finds herself at the beginning of a spectacularly bloody journey where she will fully restore herself, including regrowing her teeth and regaining her voice.

A short read jam-packed with $50 baroque vocabulary words that make the short page count feel heavier than it actually is. In the future, I’d like to return to this book and read it very slowly.

★ ★ ★ / ★

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT by RILEY SAGER (REVIEW)

quickly: unresolved childhood grief leads to irrepressible ghosts in adulthood (grief and regret / friends and foes / backyard campouts / shaken suburbs / “don’t go chasin’ waterfalls…” / strangers in the woods / kisses kept secret / occult dinner parties / marriage and miscarriages / talking ghosts).

A quiet night in the summer heat turns into a lifelong nightmare for young Ethan Marsh. After his neighbor Billy disappears into thin air, the neighborhood is left traumatized, and Ethan is left wondering what he could’ve done differently for his weird, ghost-obsessed neighbor. Now 40 and moving back into the house where Billy disappeared, Ethan is starting to see things… shadows, messages, and warnings.

An enjoyable and easy read. Great for warm weather weekends. It was like Fear Street but for grown-ups… the highly emotional and angsty decisions of teenagers and adults, the blurred lines between the horrors of human nature and the supernatural, and the well-paced page-turning thrill of discovering what truth lies at the heart of the mystery. Looking forward to more Riley Sager.

★★★★

PRETTIES by SCOTT WESTERFELD (A REVISIT)

quickly: after being captured and brainwashed by her government, a girl makes a second attempt to free herself physically, mentally, and spiritually (criminal activity is cool / blood cults are lit / designer mansions / animated tattoos / hot air balloon rides / best friends are the worst enemies / social experiments / evil scientists / two pills in a pod / nature as the cure / forest guardians / invisible fences / colonial conquest disguised as scientific exploration / questioning ‘god’).

My re-read of the UGLIES series continues, and so far has not disappointed me.

If you wake up tomorrow and realize you’ve been living in a simulation your whole life, what do you do? Do you continue living within a dream world, or do you wake up and take responsibility for your existence? Hidden in the pages of this dystopian teen sci-fi novel is a beautiful existential exploration of what it means to ‘be’. 

★★★★

JULIA by SANDRA NEWMAN (A REVIEW)

quickly: a woman’s daring sex life in a totalitarian regime leads to confinement and freedom (this is a man’s world / cameras and monitors everywhere / facetime before Facetime™ / overalls and soot / a boot in the face / thought control / see nothing, say nothing / “no touching” / people disappear / yes means no / hate means love / Big Brother becoming Big Father / cheese like rubber, bread like leather / child spies / handsome airmen in handsome uniforms / dark windowless underground prisons / government-sponsored torture / nightmares turned reality / all regimes are the same).

This is a retelling of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, from the perspective of the character Julia. Though the landscape was familiar it felt like there were so many new elements to explore, thanks to Newman’s refocusing of the story’s lens. The gray days, civil self-censoring, and grand governmental illusions are still there, but what Newman highlights is a world that is not just anti-women, but anti-Feminine. The daily assault on women and the collective feminine (those faculties we need dearly for introspection, intuition, reception, caretaking, community, and creativity) is relayed to us through Julia’s own story of growing up watched (and touched and used and forgotten). No women’s rights, but no poetry, thinking, feeling, remembering, loving, or caring either, says Big Brother, always watching. 

With this new view of the story, the smell of blood is sharper (on the street after a bomb tears off a child’s arm, or in the dungeons where they torture pregnant women and the elderly). The design of Big Brother’s Love (Hate) is clearer (double, triple, and quadruplethink… every relationship is a set-up). The heartbreakers are the moments when the wizard’s curtain is pulled back and the evil isn’t anything special… just a man. Made of flesh and feelings just like any other living thing. Subject to thirst, hunger, pain, aging, and death. How despairingly bleak it is to realize that the causes of your and the world’s tragedies are men who make decisions like kids fighting over toys on the playground. 

★★★★

UGLIES by SCOTT WESTERFELD (A REVIST)

quickly: a new friend wakes a teenage girl up to the not-so-pretty world she is living in (new face, who dis! / pretty privilege / mandatory plastic surgery / pranks and tricks as a lifestyle / journeys over the river and through the woods / solar powered hoverboards / dehydrated foodstuffs / engineered plastic and nanotech glues / ecofriendly totalitarianism / the deep deep state / underground facilities / government programming / citizen deprogramming / backstabbing the backstabbers).

Rereading since originally reading it back in 2007. First book of 2024!

Vintage clothing is cool, but what will we do when our entire society and way of life becomes vintage? What if, in an effort to rid society of its ills (war, illness, violence, etc.) we developed a medical procedure that made everyone the same and dulled our sensibilities? Scott Westerfeld isn’t a master wordsmith with a poet’s pen, but that’s not what we came here for anyway. We came for the well-constructed futuristic dystopian universe jam-packed with unimaginable avant-garde technology and the social dilemmas that erupt when humanity and technology collide. There are hoverboards that work by magnetism, medical procedures that can regrow all the skin on your body and reshape your entire bone structure, and surveillance so precise it practically knows what you are thinking.

At the center of all of this is Tally, a fifteen-year-old girl who wants exactly what everyone else in her world has been programmed to want: to be pretty. While she is awaiting the government-facilitated procedure that will make her “the standard” and initiate her into young adult society, she meets a new friend who is also nearing the time of her pretty procedure. Her new friend is a radical, transfixed by the idea of a land faraway called “The Smoke”, where many of the Uglies have been escaping to evade the overseeing technological eyes of their government… a government so secret that some don’t believe it even exists. As Tally is exposed to life outside The Cities, she becomes the focal point of a massive movement of rebellion. This was a fun, wild hoverboard ride through a very futuristic world that felt very grounded in today’s times.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Thoughts are italicized, spoilers are not: 

Some personal context… I originally read the entire Uglies trilogy one summer in 2007. I had a boxed set that included UGLIES, PRETTIES, and SPECIALS. EXTRAS hadn’t come out yet, and I’ve never read it. I vividly remember the 3 book set with the high-fashion editorial style covers. My original copies were lost in what I call “The Flood”, which took a great number of pieces in my literary collection to a moldy watery grave. I found a pic of them on Amazon though. 

These covers are SO MUCH better than the current blank generic covers they have in stores and libraries. I plan on rereading the entire series and finshing with a first read of the last book, EXTRAS.

This book made me feel like it was 2007 again, and that I could throw this book down at any moment, step outside, and find my friends waiting for me to go along on one of our adventures playing in the woods that connected our backyards.

The book starts with Tally pulling a trick by sneaking into the highly monitored New Pretty Town to visit an old friend. Tally is a young, simple, coming-of-age girl who thinks just like everyone around her… life is useless until you turn 16 and the government turns you pretty, and then life is great. Until 16, nothing matters and no one takes you seriously. Uglies, as people are lovingly called pre-operation, are expected to be wild, uncontrollable, trouble-making good for nothings. This is why all of their pranks are referred to as ugly tricks, or simply tricks. When you’re a pretty, you don’t have time for such trickery. 

The Uglies live in dorms that are bland and interchangeable. The Pretties live in a glamorous city within a city, where life is a party with a formal dress code. Then eventually Pretties undergo a second operation to become a “Middle Pretty” where they move out to the suburbs to have “Littlies”, before turning into “Crumblies” and are moved further to the edges of society. Of course, all this turns out to be well-thought-out propoganda 

Tally makes a new friend, Shay, after her old best friend Peris reaches Pretty age and undergoes the operation. He moves to New Pretty Town immediately after, as is customary, leaving Ugly life behind. After busting into New Pretty Town to see how much Peris has changed, she decides it is best to just wait until she has her own operation to see him again. Her time spent with the rebellious and adventurous Shay increases. 

Shay teaches Tally how to hack her hoverboard, sneak out of The City, and tells her about The Smoke. A place where people live as ‘Uglies’ by choice, opting out of having the operation to become pretty. Shay teaches Tally the way to the rusting city ruins where Uglies meet up to find the mysterious David who will someday lead those willing to make the journey to The Smoke.

Tally can’t comprehend life lived as an Ugly, and doesn’t understand why anyone would want to forgo the operation to become Pretty. This is why she can’t tell Shay YES, when Shay asks Tally to run away to the smoke with her before her operation. Tally ends up making the journey anyway, alone, after she is manipulated by Special Circumstances (a secret underground division of the government) into betraying her friend and everyone at The Smoke. 

Life in The Smoke opens her eyes to the real world that has been hidden from her. Her desire to be pretty wanes, and disappears after bonding with the other residents. She falls in love with David and plans to stay. After accidentally triggering the tracking device given to her by Special Circumstances, Tally leads SC directly to The Smoke. It is swiftly destroyed and all the Smokies are detained. (Cue big breakout scene where Tally escapes custody, tracks down the detainees, and frees them.)

After all the hell she’s raised, Tally ends up developing a plan to help right some of her wrongs, but you’ll have to make it through to the end to see what that may be.

The rest is for you to read on your own!

I’ve read some of the reviews on Goodreads that criticize Tally’s character as being too vain, dumb, selfish, etc. This makes me wonder if the readers with those opinions understood the circumstances of the world that Tally was a part of. Everyone was vain, dumb, and selfish. No one wanted to look under the veneer of their society because there was no reason to. Everything was taken care of. The people in this world were programmed to think that the past was a monstrous barbaric place and that all the world’s problems were solved by the development of ’the Cities’ and the Pretty operation. 

I’ve also read some reviews that criticize the fact that Tally’s love interest David is what inspires her to make her big decision to leave the cities for good. I think that is a poor summarization of this character’s journey. After having to make the long journey to The Smoke by herself, Tally endured a process of disillusionment that separated her from her life in The City. She had gone from a place where everything was planned, every move was monitored, and the threat of world catastrophe was linked to how ugly or pretty citizens were. She had never been in real danger until she made her journey to The Smoke. She had never met anyone older than 16 who was not “pretty” until she arrived at the camp, The Smoke. David was just one of the reasons she made her decisions, not the sole reason. In fact, Tally’s journey begins and ends with her trying to save her girl-friend Shay.

I won’t go into too much more detail about the story. It was just a fun read, an adventure, a journey, all those things. So glad to have re-read it, and so glad it held up after all these years. There are plenty of high-speed chases, thrilling escapes, and ingenious hi-jinks to keep you turning the page. And if you’re a tumblr kid like me, there are loads of nostalgia in reading this book again all these years later. It’s wild to think that this never made it to the big screen or as a series on someone’s streaming service. 

BOYS IN THE VALLEY by PHILIP FRACASSI (A REVIEW)

quickly: a visitor in the night brings chaos to a catholic boy’s orphanage (a young priest in training / a dark child with many faces / contamination and contagion / evil whispering / demonic entities and unclean spirits / scarred bodies and souls / solitary confinement / starvation as punishment / founding fathers / crosses falling from walls / good vs evil, light vs dark / the compelling power of christ / the cleansing power of fire).

The snow of a brutal winter storm starts to fall, and like “The Long Night”, a battle between the world’s oldest forces begins. As the few adults in charge become increasingly debilitated, the fate of all the lives at the orphanage is left to the oldest teenage boys who must gather their limited life experiences to fight against incredible odds.

This is classic horror, of the demonic excorcism variety. No comedic relief, no quirky literary devices, and no rushed ending. I’m surprised this doesn’t have a Stephen King endorsement review, as they seem to be given out generously. (But I’ll take an introduction by Andy Davidson over a Stephen King review any day!) For a coming-of-age novel, it is remarkably honest about the hardships of abuse, abandonment, and death. Honest displays of grief and trauma, especially in horror stories, require a delicate hand. The plotting and navigating of these themes was well done.

★ ★ ★ ★

THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by BRENDAN SLOCUMB (REVIEW)

quickly: a young black master violinist has his fiddle stolen just before a world-class championship (grandma’s favorite grandson / families that prey / great-great-great-great grandfathers / traffic stops and crooked cops / SLAVERY! / italian masters (of music, of plantations) / hidden treasure and family secrets / lawyers, lawsuits, and legacies).

A praying grandmother can work wonders for a family. The story is anchored by Ray and his violin, but he is here because of Grandma Nora and her appreciation of lineage and legacy. While Ray is surrounded by family members who constantly demoralize him, Grandma Nora reminds him to be loving and respectful and to honor his gift—music. The conflict commences when Ray realizes his beloved violin has gone missing, and there is a multitude of leads… the new girlfriend? his money-hungry family? the family who used to enslave his great-great-grandfather?

The writing is easy and open. The kind of reading you can do on a Sunday afternoon, or a long car ride. Doesn’t require too much mental work to stay with the story. There’s a little bit of thrill, a little bit of crime and mystery, and even a little bit of romance. It is also very honest about the discriminatory treatment of black people in music and in world society. And, as with every truly American story, The Slaves come back to remind us that they were here. An enjoyable read!

★ ★ ★ ★

THE SHARDS by BRET EASTON ELLIS (REVIEW)

quickly: a group of rich white friends are too high to notice that the new kid may be a serial killer (an imaginative young writer / a vain but popular group of friends / a new kid with a dark past / valium for breakfast, weed for lunch, ‘ludes for dinner, cocaine for dessert / boys, boys, boys / endless supplies of sex, drugs, and rock and roll / hippie cults hiding in the hills / blood sacrifices and bodily ‘arrangements’ / ‘there’s someone in the house’ / where are the adults??!)

For just a moment, I was a young, hot, high, and wealthy white seventeen-year-old in ’70s-’80s Los Angeles… My parents are never home, every day is an orgasm, and I have all the drugs and euphoria I want. In my endless pharmaceutical high, a serial killer is playing mind games with my friends and me, and I’m barely sober enough to notice it is happening.

That is THE SHARDS. I am confident that if I were to give this hardcover copy a good shake, either a quaalude, a Valium, or a mist of fine white powder may loosen itself from the bindings. These are the substances that seem to hold the story and its characters together. There’s also a hearty scoop of graphic, disturbing, deranged, stomach-churning violence… a stark contrast to the ultra-sweet lives of these young rich kids. The reality of these brutal slayings is what makes the kids’ dissociation all the more real.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… this isn’t the book I originally planned on reading after “HUMAN SACRIFICES” by María Ampeuro, but it was actually the perfect follow-up. The world of the characters in María’s stories were soaked in the harsh realities of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. What better pairing than a story on the other end of the spectrum… rich white kids with Daddy’s money made from exploiting others!

This is my first Bret Easton Ellis book. All I knew about the guy before reading this was that he wrote AMERICAN PSYCHO. I’ve seen the movie, but I’ve never read the book. I actually owned the book for years, and it was destroyed in a flooded storage facility. Nevertheless, I ended up meeting Bret Easton Ellis’s work anyways. Not because I sought out his penmanship, but because, as tends to happen, I just had a good feeling about the book based on the cover, description, and number of reviews.

This book made me feel poor and ugly, and I think that was the point!

This is a story about a story. The book opens with a prelude in present-day LA as our narrator, Bret Easton Ellis, is driving around and sees an old classmate, which ignites panic within him. 

From there we are sent back to the summer before Bret’s senior year begins. He is a closeted bisexual man in love with his best friend Sarah, who is dating his good friend Thom (whom he is also in love with). He doesn’t seem to be in love with his girlfriend Debbie at all. An idyllic summer spent third wheeling with Susan and Thom ends once school starts and a new guy is introduced at the morning assembly… Robert Mallory. 

Immediately, Robert gets under Bret’s skin. Bret remembers seeing Robert months before he moved to L.A., at a movie theater, but Robert’s consistent denial of this drives Bret crazy. Taking time off from the different guys at school he is secretly intimate with, he decides to follow Robert after school one day. Robert catches him in the act of tailing him and any chance they had at a friendship is ruined. From here on out, it’s a game of cat and mouse between the two. (Or maybe mouse and mouse?)

The first major OMG moment is the death of Matt (a consistently stoned hottie), one of Bret’s ‘intimate friends’. 

As Bret watches Robert ease his way into the various friend groups on campus, he begins to see a side of Robert that is only noticeable from a distance… he notices the silent calculations that Robert is constantly making as if Robert is devising some secret masterplan. It’s then that Robert begins taunting Bret, dropping hints that he knows about the relationship between Bret and Matt. It’s also then that Matt starts receiving mysterious phone calls and notices that someone has stolen his pet fish and rearranged his room. In a state of psychological anguish, he accuses Bret of being behind it, due to some ‘gay’ obsession with Matt. Soon after, Matt turns up dead. Missing for several days, then found dead and mutilated in his own backyard. 

Bret meets with Matt’s father and learns the horrid details of Matt’s death. This makes the outlines of what Bret may be dealing with become more real now. No one cares about Matt’s death enough to notice the pattern that is forming. News articles begin to appear, daily, about missing girls, missing pets, mysterious home break-ins with furniture being rearranged, and late-night attacks. The police eventually put together a profile for a killer they are calling The Trawler. There are hints that he may be connected to a roving group of Manson-esque murder hippies that are terrorizing LA.

Bret makes the decision to divide himself between a true, hidden Bret, and a false, public Bret. Public Bret will play the role of a model student and boyfriend, while private Bret investigates Robert Mallory, whom he believes to be The Trawler. Valium, Quaaludes, and marijuana form the wall between the real and fake Brets. (Imagine someone breaking into your home, and you pop a pill and hide in a closet, falling asleep, and just hoping they pass you by.) Cue an endless string of parties, conversations, car rides, class assignments, and missed calls from Debbie (and The Trawler) that Bret floats through.

Fast forward past more missing women, Bret following Robert Mallory through the streets of LA, Bret being followed by a mysterious van through the streets of LA, Bret being taunted by The Trawler, Bret meeting with Robert’s aunt and finding out about Robert’s dark past, Bret breaking into Robert’s second home, Bret sleeping with Debbie’s dad, and Bret’s numerous attempts at telling someone what may be happening with Robert and being called crazy, etc. 

Eventually, we reach the foggy climax. After Debbie goes missing, Bret is convinced that Susan is the Trawler’s next victim. Robert’s next victim. He decides to take matters into his own hands. That night, Susan and Thom are attacked at Susan’s home by a masked assailant. Susan bites the assailant and he runs out (but not before disfiguring Susan’s breast, and Thom’s leg). Robert comes to the rescue, getting them help, and then heads back to his apartment. Bret arrives at Robert’s apartment soon after and a fight ensues that leads to Robert jumping to his death. Bret is alive and tells a version of the story that exonerates himself, and there is no one to dispute it. 

It is only in the denouement that it is revealed that Bret was the attacker that night of Susan and Thom’s attempted killing… and this is where I started to come down off the story’s canna/lude/coke/valium high… We find out that Bret is Susan and Thom’s attacker after Susan recognizes the bite mark she left on her attacker’s arm, casually peeking out from Bret’s long sleeve Polo. He breaks her hand and threatens her, to keep her quiet. (It’s only years later that Bret finds out Susan immediately told Thom about what she saw on Bret’s arm).

Coupled with this jarring reveal, we are also told (through a letter written to the press) that The Trawler is neither Bret nor Robert. The Trawler is independent of both young men but is indeed a part of the cult roaming the hills of LA. They claim that Robert Mallory was ‘their God’, and the mutilated bodies were ’sacrifices’ given to ‘the God’. Then I just sat with the book closed and wondered what I had just read.

I went back and forth on whether I felt this deserved 4 or 5 stars (like my opinion matters LOL). What gives me doubt is the execution of the ending. As bulky of a book as THE SHARDS is, the writing was actually pretty easy to follow. It flowed frictionlessly from one page to the next. I didn’t even mind all the extraneous storylines because they flowed, and added flesh to the characters. However, the last few chapters ended in such an odd package of revelations and reveals that it almost seemed as if a different writer had tried to finish the story with Bret’s voice.

Now, I must also say, that after reading the book I did a lite Google search on Bret Easton Ellis, just to see what he’s up to today. Unsurprisingly, he seems to be exactly the man I’d expect him to be after growing up as a well-to-do SoCal private school kid (i.e., his book White, 2019). He has not escaped the haze of privilege and wealth, that tends to blind those with his upbringing, from the complex harsh multi-ethnic multi-cultural struggles of the world. I wasn’t disappointed though. Just confirmed. Only a privileged asshole could write so excellently about vanity, insecurity, and recreational pharmaceuticals. 

DEVIL HOUSE by JOHN DARNIELLE (REVIEW)

quickly: a true crimes writer moves into the building where the murders in his latest book took place (a writer questioning the ethics of his process / the past catching up with the present / lasting works of art / stories about stories / small towns outside of big cities / housing, drug, and mental health crises / mothers who love their sons / SATANIC PANIC! / swords, knights, and castle doctrines / the monsters are the people, but are the people monsters?)

This is not horror and hardly a thriller. There are no ghosts, demons, or spirits. There are indeed bumps in the night, but they come from the living. It’s a fresh take on mystery writing, but not really mystery either. It’s an exposition. We follow the main character, Greg, as he completes his latest true crime novel. The voices change throughout the story, so sometimes Greg is speaking to us, other times to someone else. The fun part of this story is the writing and the behind-the-scenes peek into the world of true crime. The not-so-fun part is the ending. 

John Darnielle’s writing spirals and descends. He takes his time moving around the subject, encircling it with details, getting closer and deeper at the end of every paragraph. Then, as you are rounding the last bend, the entire picture becomes clear from the inside out. It was like unraveling a beautifully woven ball of yarn, expecting a rare jewel at its center, but finding the end of a string instead. (Maybe, this is the entire meta point of this story… life is just a series of strings ending. Nothing special.)

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS

Some personal context… I came across this one because I was scouring the goodreads tag for “horror” and looking for interesting things that came out in the past year or two. The cover got me, as they tend to do. I rarely check the reviews before I read the story, but I always check after, just to see what there is I might have missed. I think I liked it more than most. As interesting as this book was to read, it didn’t deliver the THRILL I thought it would. It read like a poet writing a Wikipedia page… an intricate balance between truth and perception and the philosophy of cause and effect.

I recently read TROOP, and one of my gripes was the dialogue for the young teens that the story centered on. It felt so outdated and inauthentic. The dialogue, actions, and inner monologues for the teens at the center of DEVIL HOUSE were immaculate. Perfectly nuanced, and varied. The sophisticated unraveling of emotions and motivations is moving. He totally encapsulates the angst of aging. Now that I think about it, I actually would’ve loved to have seen John Darnielle do a version of TROOP.

The story is divided into 6 parts, and they each have different voices.

1: Chandler

We open with our good friend Greg Chandler, whose family lineage of kingship becomes a recurring thematic element in this story. He introduces us, right off the rip, to who he is, what he does, and his latest project. His agent has hipped him to the story of a couple of people murdered in an old porno shop in Milpitas, CA, outside of San Jose. 

He walks us through his process… one of immersion, invasion almost, that requires him to be in the places where these crimes took place. He, again with a nudge from his agent, devises a plan to purchase ‘DEVIL HOUSE’, which has been renovated, turned from a shop into a home, and is currently for sale. As he goes through the process of buying the house and moving in, he takes time to expound on the details of the case. He gives us an introduction to necessary persons and places, and at the end of Part 1, he tells us that what he discovered differs from the story that is told. He also tells us that he does not want to write the story he was sent there to write.

2: White Witch

Here, the story changes abruptly. Now, our narrator is no longer talking to us. Now, attention is directed to ‘The White Witch’, and we have become the ‘White Witch’ being addressed. (An interesting use of narration perspective, though I understand how some could find it jarring and confusing.) Eventually, we will come to know her life… a high school teacher who murdered two students while they were invading her home. Part 2 is a grand spiral around the details of her life leading up to the invasion and murder. In the open, she was just a school teacher. In the end, standing on the beach with bags of body parts, she has turned into the satanic WITCH living in the hills. Both in some real reality, but also in the minds of those always needing a villain to blame the evils of the world on.

3: Devil House

Our narrator returns to addressing us, and the White Witch’s story is paused. Now the focus returns to Milpitas, to Devil House before it was known as such. We get a grand historical overview of the influences that conspired to make the porno shop possible. This includes the history of the land and the landlord. However, the bulk of this part of the story is about the last occupants of Devil House, before our narrator Greg. 

We go back to it when it was MONSTER ADULT X, a porno shop on the side of the highway where 17-year-old Derrick works, unbeknownst to his parents who only want to best for him. MONSTER ADULT X (I’ll refer to it as MAX from here on out), is in its last days as the owner Anthony Hawley can’t keep up the rent payments.

Hawley closes the place down, but because Derrick still has his key, it is open to him. He hangs out there drawing and sketching. Then his friend Seth starts joining him. Then their homeless friend Alex, who’s been missing for some time joins them and lives there. Just at the tail end of things, Alex’s friend Angela pops in for some of the fun. 

This is their paradise, away from the impending world of adulthood and all its anxieties and broken promises. Things are fine until the landlord starts showing the place, in preparation to sell.

4: Song of Gorbonian 

A short and unexpected chapter, written in Olde English. Obviously, this is an imaginative prelude for some of the story’s later motifs and actions. Yet, it could just as well be a short story written during a reprieve Greg was taking from writing Devil House… or a rambling from one of MAX’s occupants during its last days… who’s to say? The Song of Gorbonian is a tale of a young king’s promise to avenge his father’s death and restore the gods of the old world.  

5: Devil House

In this part of the story, Greg updates us on the stories of MAX’s occupants. He catches up with modern-day Angela, Derrick, and Seth, all living different adult lives far away from Milpitas, having escaped any punishment, (but receiving tons of blame for the murders). The only one we don’t get an update on is Alex, who has managed to disappear. 

6: White Witch

Now we are back to the story of the White Witch, but not like before. Instead of standing in her place while Greg speaks to her, we are instead placed in the shoes of Jana, Jesse’s mother, one of the kids killed by Mrs. Crane, The White Witch. We are standing in Jana’s shoes as Greg reads (or summarizes rather) a letter Jana wrote. In reading this letter back to her, we come to understand the forces that shaped the life of the home invaders we met in Part 2.

In between the breaths of this letter, Greg is restoring Devil House to its former glory… breaking glass and pulling up carpets. 

7: Chandler

The perspectives change again. Now we are standing in the shoes of Greg’s childhood friend, as we reconnect with Greg after several years and he expounds on the new project he is working on, writing about a murder in Milpitas where he (we?) grew up. At the close of Part 7, we learn that this has all been a fabrication. Derrick, Seth, Angela, Alex… not one of them was real. At least, not in the form that Greg portrayed them to be in his book. The real culprits were likely men living on the streets, squatting for the night, running into the landlord, and reactions ensuing. 

Greg reveals his grand philosophy on what the public expects from true crime, and how the true story of Devil House would not satisfy the psyches of the consumers. Then the book fades out in a hazy memory of childhood, where the days were spent playing games.

Before I could complain too much about the ending, I had to remind myself that Greg told us exactly to expect: “What I learned contradicts the account I first read, which I understand to have sprung from the need for a certain sort of telling, a hunger for known quantities.” In other words, the salacious story of teens murdering to defend their clubhouse is something cooked up by the collective psyche, not by reality.

More than a fictional true crime book, this entire work seemed to be a rumination of the big machine of true crime itself and how we respond to these violent acts as a society. What do we want from these stories? Who do these acts of violence affect? At one end of a story, a person may look like a demon, but if we trace back all the influences and occurrences, we may find this person may have been someone else at some point… and if it is true that they were someone else, how much responsibility do we place on all the option-less choices people are forced to make, and on the uncontrollable forces that shape the boundaries of our lives?

MY DARKEST PRAYER by S. A. COSBY (REVIEW)

quickly: a formerly active marine is enlisted to solve the murder of a local preacher (men in uniform with anger issues / a woman all the men want / nosy old ladies / crafty and devious henchmen / blood-filled knee-breaking fist fights / hot and steamy hotel nights / churches with more money than god / local and state corruption).

this is a crime thriller that does the genre justice. it feels like a fast-paced car ride with that rowdy cousin who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. i picked it up late one night and couldn’t stop turning the page. nathan, a man who used to wear uniforms but doesn’t any longer, tries to solve a murder without getting himself killed. the writing is easy without being simplistic. there are just enough characters and just enough character development to fulfill your literary appetite without being weighted down by words. it’s adult, graphic, and bloody, without overdoing it. for all the broken bones and grittiness, it maintains an earthy and realistic view.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… this is the first crime thriller novel I’ve read since my joyous reunion with reading began. I truly found it entertaining, and I am excited to read more by Cosby specifically. As a true fan of the genre, Cosby placed several cultural references throughout the story, with a large portion of them referring to other crime novels and writers… something to explore when I need something else to read.

Since it’s a crime mystery thriller, I won’t reveal too much in the commentary. It was fun to wonder what happened next. Which is of course, along with the sweaty must of inebriated masculinity, a key element of the genre. 

I hate to be shallow, but it was the cover that got me. 

The story opens with our action figure of a hero, Nathan: a marine who is no longer active in the service; and an ex-policeman who left the force dishonorably, depending on whose honor system you use. He is a man who is not a stranger to violence but is mostly a gentleman on most accounts. By day he works at his cousin’s funeral home. By night, he shoots pool down at the local dive. But sometimes, when vengeance calls, he moves in shadows to exact the justice and revenge law enforcement is incapable of. 

After the preacher of a mega-bank mega-church dies under mysterious circumstances, Nathan is asked by two old ladies of the church to do some further investigation. They believe his history and familiarity with the aforementioned law enforcement would allow him to see something the local cops may have been trying to hide. Thinking this will be a quick job and easy money, Nathan opens a can of worms that results in several deaths and broken phalanges. Some people, Nathan makes sure disappear, never to be found again. Others he leaves for someone else to find and draw conclusions. 

This detective is not a detective, but, his time in uniform has taught him how to ask questions and get answers. This portrayal of the classic tragic noir detective has all the blood, booze, and hot passionate sex that you need… and it feels current. Not like some vintage paperback I found at a book barn. It is of the time. 

Will certainly be reading more S. A. Cosby soon.

THE VANISHING HALF by BRIT BENNETT (REVIEW)

quickly: a set of twins go missing from their small town, one returns, one does not (sister vs. sister and mother vs. daughter / displaced people finding placement / people that drink sweet tea / towns so small they disappear on maps / racist homeowner's associations / the weight and lineage of skin color / taking risks and making changes).

twin sisters grow tired of their life in small town Louisianna, and go looking for their future in New Orleans. tragedy has bonded them into a single being, but after leaving home, one story becomes split between two different lives. moving through the 60’s 70’s and 80’s, we see the lives of three generations of women, though the story is anchored by the twins. one twin passes for white, opening the world up beyond her wildest dreams (and nightmares). the other twin falls in love with a man darker than her, in skin tone and in spirit, coincidentally, and the world seems to close shut around her. time conspires with lineage, and eventually reveals the consequences of each of their decisions. 

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal thoughts… I picked this book for a friend’s summer booklist. (It was full of non-fiction, which is cool, but fiction has been allowing me to wrap my mind around things in a different way.) We watched the Netflix film Passing a few years ago, so I thought this book would be an interesting conversation extender; looking at the same topic from a different angle and a different medium.

I picked the book up to preview the first chapter. (We weren’t scheduled to read this together for a few weeks.) Before I knew it, I was swept into the story. I finished it in two days. 

We open in the far past, a single mother is raising a set of twins in a small Louisianna town, Mallard, which is occupied by light-skinned black people. It was founded by a light-skinned man who had some lofty idea for a town of people who weren’t white but were better than the other blacks. His great-great-great granddaughters, the twins, Desiree and Stella, would soon arrive to the world and embody this colorist struggle.

After the twins witness the lynching of their father, sealing them in a bond of shared trauma, their mother begins to depend on them to help earn money for the family. As soon as they are old enough, they are taken out of school and sent to work in the home of a wealthy white couple. This dashes the dreams of both twins, who dread ending up like their mother. While under employ by the wealthy couple, they are overworked and one of the twins is sexually abused. It is then that they make plans to run away to New Orleans.

In New Orleans, new circumstances give each of the twins new opportunities to ‘unlock’ new aspects of themselves. After passing for white to get a new job, Stella becomes swept with the chance to live a life of ease and acceptance. She is a young secretary for an older boss, and soon becomes his wife, and mother of his ‘white child’. They live in Los Angeles. Her personality is a shell, but she has all the material things she could need. Including her morning cocktails in the backyard pool. 

Meanwhile, Desiree is working for the FBI in D.C., married to a man who hits her whenever the wind blows. After one too many beatings, Desiree decides to run away home to Mallard with her dark-skinned daughter. The flat circle of time begins to curl back towards the beginning. Fast forward past the bounty hunter her husband sends after her, said bounty hunter falling in love with her, her daughter Jude growing up alienated in a ‘light-skins only’ town, and Jude receiving a scholarship and moving to go to a school in Los Angeles.

It is in Los Angeles that Jude finds love, an affirmation after years of being deemed socially ‘ugly’. By chance, she also finds her long-lost cousin, Stella’s daughter, Kennedy. We learn that Kennedy grew up with a hollow mother who never revealed anything significant about herself. A mother who fought to keep a black family out of the neighborhood, but then secretly befriends them. A mother who introduced her to the ’n-word’, and then slapped her for using it. A mother who couldn’t be truthful if she tried… living in a completely different reality that she won’t allow to be deconstructed. 

Conflicts arise between Jude and Kennedy, as she tries to get Kennedy to see who her mother really is. Conflicts arise between Stella and Desiree, miles away, as Stella believes Desiree can keep Jude from shattering Stella’s reality. Conflicts arise within each of the characters, trying to understand the motives of every other person and the world they’ve built around themselves. 

The climax and the resolution walk each other to the last pages. After one final reunion, each of the twin sisters makes peace with the decisions they have made. Somehow, we end with Jude and her boyfriend swimming naked in a river. A metaphor for living in your truth?

A fantastic world. It’s always nice to take a trip down South. A full four stars. If this were a wine, I would say I’d like for it to have a little more body, a little more time to let the bottle age in a dark basement. Yet, I am in love with the author’s tone and voice, and can’t wait to see what else she puts to print.

DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: the death of a woman’s neighbor reveals the fury of mother nature (a ‘crazy old woman’ with ailments and astrology / estranged neighbors / friends who make life easier / blood in the snow / small town gossip / dreams of the dead / the will of man vs. nature).

how much of the natural world can an old, country, polish woman try to save on her own? Mrs. Duszejko doesn’t eat meat and is almost at an age where she can’t survive a hard winter alone. she lives outside of town, with two other neighbors and only a handful of visitors. after one of her neighbors is found dead, she begins to see signs all around that nature is reclaiming its territory. her protests and letters to the local police about her theories often go unheeded or are discarded as the ramblings of an ‘old crone’. after many philosophical wanderings through the forests and hills, Mrs. Duszejko reveals the nature of the truth.

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… I read Olga Tokarczuk’s THE BOOKS OF JACOB not too long ago. It was an immersively lengthy and detailed read, but worth it. Drawn to her writing style and choice of subject matter, I was curious to try something more novelistic, from her pen. I’m also back in my thriller/horror bag and was delighted to find out Olga had written something in the genre. 

I was drawn to the murder and the astrology, and I received fulfilling helpings of both.

The story opens and the action immediately begins, which I loved. We are with Olga in the middle of her astrology studies, on a dark winter evening, when her neighbor, Oddball, informs her that their other neighbor, Bigfoot, is dead in his home.On the cold walk to Bigfoot’s home, we learn that our beloved Mrs. Duszejko communes with the forest in some inner spiritual way. She believes the animals and trees and hills are just as alive as any of us, and have their rights too. This is why she believes Bigfoot died choking on a deer bone; he transgressed some law of nature by killing and eating a fawn.  

As they take the time to dress Bigfoot and contort his twisted body into something less humiliating and dishonorable, a sort of religious awakening happens for Mrs. Duszejko. She believes the woodland creatures of the dark winter night are forming a pact with her, assigning her some duty to speak for them. So begins her petitions. She visits the local police station to inform them that the animals are exacting their ‘revenge’, and it was them who were responsible for the death of Bigfoot… as a result of him killing one of their own. 

Fast forward past her being laughed out of the police station and every other public office in town. Her letters, which public officials are required to respond to within 14 days, go without an answer. She tells her theory to anyone that will listen. Including her frequent visitor Dizzy, a friend, who works at the police station and passes along gossip, but translates old poetry, by Blake, with Mrs. Duszejko in his free time. They eat lots of soups. He tells her to keep her theories to herself. Her living neighbor, Oddball, doesn’t say much at all on his infrequent visits. 

In between these visits for tea, and Mrs. Duszejko’s campaigns at public offices and letters to public officials, the bodies are piling up. The police, and the public, are concocting a grand theory of mobsters and poachers and two-timing policemen. Mrs. Duszejko points to the abundance of animal evidence found at the scenes of the crimes, and also to the climate changing, and the imbalances of nature that could cause wildlife to change. Just as importantly, don’t forget the astrology! Not only do the individual birth charts of the victims show they are destined for death caused by an animal, but the current transits of the planets confirm animal madness as well!

As more men are found dead, her fervor grows. She not only theorizes that the animals are killing people, but that we must give them their rights in order for it to cease. She cites legal cases from hundreds of years ago where insects and animals were tried in courts of law. She proclaims we must stop polluting and disturbing the natural lands. We must stop overkilling, poaching, and shooting anything that moves. Because of her proximity to some of the victims, and her reputation, she is even arrested for a day, while her home is searched.

In public, she is getting into physical altercations with soldiers disturbing the forest, and cursing priests who preach about the glories and goodness of hunting. In private, at home, she is dreaming of the dead… people, family, animals, etc. She is a caretaker of empty houses, caretaker of forested lands, caretaker of animal graves and headstones. From the time the story has opened, until the close, Mrs. Duszejko has cried liters and liters of tears. She isn’t sure if it’s her astrology, her ailments, or her nature. (Maybe some of all, if everything is connected.) 

The end of the world comes after Mrs. Duszejko’s reputation as an eco-warrior is fully established. The police return to her during their investigation, this time with cause for arrest. Gossip gets to her first and she is able to hide herself away, down in the basement boiler room with the memories of her deceased mother and grandmother and animals. 

The story ends with Mrs. Duszejko safe from harm, making it past that treacherous Saturn transit. She is ailing, but alive, safe with her astrology, and confident in her knowledge that though she hurts, she is not dying anytime soon.

There’s something about her ecological spirit, her knowledge of the earth, and her use of astrology, that reminds me of Yente (The Goddess) from The Books of Jacob. Both are strange, aged, feminine figures who resist the solar masculine order and uphold the lunar and natural feminine realm. Yente resisting death and time and space. Mrs. Duszejko resisting man and his laws.

I fluctuate between a high 4 and a 5. There were parts that lingered just a beat longer than I’d liked. I would’ve loved just a bit more suspense, but that doesn’t really seem to be Olga’s style. Her writing (of the two books I’ve read so far) lends itself to the freedom of the details of moments in time. Large parts of this book felt like I was sitting with the nice old lady in the neighborhood, talking about nothing. Tea time.

I also feel like, in time, I will re-read this book and be delighted in the little breadcrumbs and apple cores left here and there, that eventually lead up to Mrs. Dusjeko’s grand reveal as a guardian goddess of the forest, divine and unreal, unseeable by most mortals, but known well by all the other blessed creatures.