Quick Bite: Super cool story, but the script is a slog.
(*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*)
What it’s about: In the long-ago 1990’s, a group of 20-somethings camped out at an abandoned school, filming a movie with a small cast and a smaller budget. Their goal was to make a horror movie like nothing that had been done before, and they absolutely succeeded. Not because the movie was a blazing success, but because of the horrific on-set tragedies that befell the production. Only three scenes and a script were ever released, and those only on the internet. Today, a big-name studio wants to remake the movie and completely revive the original group’s vision. There are a few big reasons why that is a very bad idea….
A Word From The Nerd: My beloved nerdlings, this book was challenging. It flips between past and present, between straightforward narration and pages from an overly artsy, wordy script that regularly interrupts the story with way too many extraneous details.. Our narrator has his own perspective which, due to a lot of trauma, may be a bit skewed. It seems messy, even though the story focuses tightly on the original movie set and the lone survivor telling the tale. Ultimately, it comes together, sort of, with a bit of philosophical musing and a horror-movie-ish ending. It just feels like it takes too many words to get there.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and some extra-buttery popcorn, I’m in a movie theater mood.)
Quick Bite: If I didn’t already hate winter, I would after this.
What It’s About: Three men, friends since childhood, are each dealing with huge personal losses and upheavals when they decide to spend a weekend at the cabin in the Yukon wilderness that one of them has inherited. Sure, there’s a blizzard moving in, and said inheritance includes some pretty dark family secrets, but what could go wrong?
A Word From The Nerd: Duckies, A LOT can go wrong. I’m not going to elaborate, because the fun of this one is in the slow revealing of layer after layer of story, history, and myth. Just make sure, if you’re reading it, that you have an extra heavy blanket handy. You’re going to want one.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and a nice veggie tray, I’m off meat for a while.)
Quick Bite: Took me a bit to get into, but then boy howdy did it get bananas.
What It’s About: So say you’re a maid, like Kit Darling (and I do love that name), with pretty much limitless access to the homes and secrets of your wealthy employers. Imagine if you could peek into their drawers and closets, to get a gander at what secrets they might be keeping. It sounds like fun, until you find a secret so dark that your employers would kill to keep it. And then you go missing…
A Word From The Nerd: Duckies, this one took me four days to read the first quarter, and one day to read the rest. It is a bit of a slow start, with lots of characters jumping around in time, but once it finds its footing, welp, just stock your snacks, buckle in and get comfortable. You aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and a jar of seeds, I’ve decided that I need a wild crow friend.)
Quick Bite: I went back in time, and I would do it again. Minus my questionable 90’s hair.
What It’s About: In the early 1990’s, in the small town of Harting Farms, teenagers are disappearing without a trace. As the son of a cop, Angelo Mazzone is aware of the missing kids, but things take a turn when a body is found near December Park. And when Adrian, the strange boy who just moved in next door, finds the first clue, Angelo and his friends decide to join Adrian in solving the mystery.
A Word From The Nerd: This is a nostalgia-rich love song to small-town, pre-internet, kids-on-bikes days, a coming-of-age story of a boy who wants to grow up to be a horror writer and finds himself the center of the scariest story around. Sure it’s fun to reminisce, if you were around for those days, but there were a lot of elements that felt like an echo of Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Brad Strickland, and a whole lot of other familiar names. At times, it felt like Mr. Malfi was trying too hard to emulate his predecessors, like I was reading whole chapters I’ve read before. That said, there was an undeniably beautiful symmetry in two boys who have experienced so much loss obsessing over finding something. And oh, Duckies, that final twist… All I can say is, Mr. Malfi, Quit Playing Games With My heart.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and a bottle of Jolt, man I used to love that stuff.)
Quick Bite: This one is just plain weird. I dig it.
What It’s About: When Emma was five, her mother went violently insane on her fortieth birthday, and has spent the last thirty five years catatonic in a locked ward. In the weeks before that fateful day, she experienced profound insomnia. Now it’s a few days before Emma’s 40th, and she can’t sleep anymore.
A Word From The Nerd: I don’t know where to start. We have piles of paranoia, family dysfunction on a few levels (Emma’s husband and kids, as well as her sister and mother are, to put it mildly, not doing well), work stress, a stalker, and an explanation that’s so out-there that it shouldn’t work in any universe. But in this one, it kind of does. I have to say though, as a life-long insomniac, I Get It. It can feel impossible to make good choices when your brain seems hell-bent on torturing you, but even so, I wanted to slap some sense into Emma more than once.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and an extra-large coffee.)
Short Take: Gage Greenwood is absolutely fearless.
(*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*)
Duckies, this past week has been a lot. Like a LOT a lot. World events are giving me big anxiety, and another election is barrelling toward us and I just can’t. You know? I can’t look away, I can’t get my poor brain around all of it, and if it weren’t for yarn and books, well, I would probably be freaking out in some very loud, very public way.
And speaking of Big Feelings…
On A Clear Day, You Can See Block Island begins four years ago,when a grieving father and his five children moved into a big old house on Block Island. They’ve received a windfall following the sudden, tragic death of their wife and mother, which makes the place feel dark and tainted from the start. But another horrific tragedy occurs almost immediately, and this one is far more terrifying.
Now Jackson is an alcoholic and his children are living with his sister – mostly ignored, dealing with poverty, addiction, and pretty much the whole range of issues you’d expect in traumatized children when they grow older without any help navigating the nightmare they lived. But the demons of Block Island aren’t done with this family…
My beloved Nerdlings, I have lots of conflicted feelings about this book. First and foremost, I want to give a full-throated OMG HE DID NOT JUST DO THAT. Because as I mentioned above, Mr. Greenwood is the star pupil of the School of Kill Your Darlings, and he does so with the kind of heartless, malicious, sadistic glee I haven’t seen outside of Game of Thrones. No one is safe, and each death is somehow gory, visceral, and heartbreaking at the same time. It’s a testament to his writing that the reader can feel so deeply about even minor characters.
But sometimes, that heavy grief vibe is just a shade too much. I love that Mr. Greenwood is not afraid to hurt my feelings, but I also felt a little too bogged down at times, a little too deep in those feelings to appreciate the (also very well written) scenes of tension, action, terror, and so on.
That said, the story itself is absolutely fantastic. The monster is completely original, and felt so “real” that I had to pause my reading to google it, searching for more lore. The kids are great characters. Even though the youngest ones felt a bit overly precocious at times, well, there are very good reasons they are old for their ages.
And I absolutely loved the way that the story went in a direction that I did not expect. I can see the influence of a certain famous work that will not be named, and I dig it.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and some seashells and Beach Life, please, I’ve had enough winter.)
Quick Bite: Dude. Horror, history, and heartache. And CARNIES.
What It’s About: A WWII-era carnival magician is obsessed with more than just card tricks and sawing ladies in half. And when he summons something of unimaginable power and evil, the entire town of Litchfield will turn out for the show.
A Word From The Nerd: I’m just gonna say it: I unapologetically love old-timey carnival horror. Blame Tod Browning, or Carnivale, or even Twilight Eyes (which I read at a far-too-impressionable age). But almost any work in any medium that includes a dusty midway and janky rides and a freak show made up of the most humane humans is an automatic YES PLEASE from me. Needless to say, Mr. Kurtz’s book includes all of those, plus a heaping dose of Our Town on LSD. Loved the trippy vibe, but I would’ve liked a more definitive ending. After being on such a journey with characters that great, I felt a little bit like I was left hanging in the final pages.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and ALL the fair food. All of it.)
What It’s About: After the death of their mother, seven-year-old twins Sylvie and Cassia are obviously having a hard time adjusting. So it’s totally normal that they find comfort in an imaginary friend they call Black Mamba. Their father seeing him too, however, is not so normal.
A Word From The Nerd: Duckies, I did not think this book was scary while I was reading it. Creepy, yes, because twins and haunted houses are always creepy. But while I was reading it, I kept having what I referred to as “non-mares” – I would dream that I was doing something totally normal and boring, like putting groceries away, but I’d be feeling this terrible feeling of fear and dread, as if something really horrible was just about to happen. Then I’d wake up in the middle of the night & not be able to go back to sleep because that dream-feeling just wouldn’t go away. Now, I’m not saying it’s absolutely because of this book, but I’ve never had that happen (let alone several nights in a row) before or since reading it. So something was working on my psyche, and it could very well have been this book.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and a nice cup of tea.)
Short Take: In a book, there are twists, and there are TWISTS. This is the second one.
(*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*)
Duckies, where did the year go?? One minute I’m floating in the pool, soaking up the sun and a yummy book, and now I have to put away the Christmas tree (no worries on the cookie front however, I put those away first thing). I will never understand the tricks that time plays. It speeds up, it slows down, and when you’re not paying attention, it might slip a few extra hours into your day. And if you’re really not looking, time will take away some days and then be all “Surprise! It’s Tuesday!”
Stupid time.
Time, however, is also the theme of this week’s book. In Twenty-Seven Minutes, the lives of three young people (and by extension, all the people closest to them) are destroyed in an instant: In a horrific car crash, following a drunken party, Phoebe is killed, her brother Grant (the driver) becomes the town pariah, and Becky, who was in the backseat, is alive but most definitely not OK.
But it’s not the split second of impact that the town of West Wilmer is fixated on, rather, it’s the twenty-seven minutes that elapsed between the crash and Grant’s 911 call. Nobody knows for sure why he waited so long to call, but everyone has their own ideas.
Another family was forever changed that same night. June’s older brother Wyatt, a troubled and troublemaking young man, also disappeared the night of the crash, and has not been heard from since. Because of Wyatt’s bad reputation, nobody really paid much attention, assuming he’d skipped out for greener pastures.
But now it’s the tenth anniversary of the crash, and someone is finally ready to tell the truth. No matter who it destroys.
Well, my nerdlings, I’m just gonna come out & say it. This twist shocked me. Like, I had to close my kindle and pace for a few minutes to digest it. I thought for sure that I had figured out the big shocker, but I wasn’t even close. Not in the same state, not in the same country. My gob was most thoroughly smacked, and so on, and so forth, and [insert clever euphemisms for very surprised here].
So I was genuinely impressed with this one. Ms. Tate knocked me for a loop in a way that not many authors do anymore, and I must give her loads of credit for that.
My only issue is that the leadup to that astonishing revelation was, at times, a bit of a forced march. Obviously, a book about a beautiful, brilliant young woman who died prematurely, and all the survivors who are dealing with their own ruined lives isn’t going to have a lot of joy or fun in it. But sometimes, it all just felt too heavy. The misery is unrelenting, the settings are uniformly bleak, the entire cast of main and supporting characters are all doing nothing but suffering.
It’s true to life, but it’s also numbing after a while. I did get a kick out of Becca’s histrionics, however, she was so out there that at times she nearly circled around to entertaining.
Overall, I would still recommend this book, because although it can be a little rough to get there, the end is absolutely worth it.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and a few extra days on the weekend, please?)
Short Take: For once, the big twist in a story about identical twins wasn’t the twist that’s ALWAYS in stories about identical twins.
(*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*)
Happy New Year, my beloved Nerdlings! I’ve decided that instead of resolutions this year, I’m going to go with a sort of personal wishlist – learning things I’ve always wanted to learn, finding some small ways to treat my body better, spending more time with friends. Sort of a low calorie version of resolutions, if you will. I want to focus on some small tweaks to the whole mind-body-spirit thing, without setting myself up with big goals that I’ll probably fail.
And of course, to read and review more tasty books. I’ve been failing on the review front for a while – covid brain fog is a nasty lingering thing – but I want to try to get back into sharing my opinions with the six or so people who enjoy them.
So let’s start with Where You End, shall we? I’ll be honest – I thought this book looked pretty good when I saw it on Netgalley & requested it, then, when my request was approved, I asked myself what I was thinking. Books about identical twins (although Kat & Jude are mirror twins, identical but opposite) that promise a big twist always deliver the exact same twist. No, I’m not going to name it here, anyone who’s read more than like 2-3 thrillers about twins already knows it. So I was understandably annoyed with myself & ready to grumble & slog my way through this book to the oh-so-predictable ending.
Sometimes I love being wrong.
When Kat Bird wakes up from a coma with near-total amnesia, the only person she recognizes is her twin sister Jude. As soon as Kat is released from the hospital, Jude takes her in and begins to tell Kat about their shared past, as well as who Kat was as a person. But Jude has plenty of good reasons to lie…
As I said, this book did not go where I was sure it was going to go, and for that reason alone, it’s better than a lot of what’s out there. My big issue with Where You End, however, was the terribly uneven pacing. We flip back and forth between Kat in the present day, trying to remember herself and getting into various difficult situations, and Jude in the past, recounting their childhood and events leading up to the pivotal car accident.
But there are seemingly long stretches of not much happening, lots of extraneous details, vague hints about things actually happening, ruminations, observations, determinations, and then a bunch of stuff happens at once, then back to crawling sloooooooooooooooowly along toward the next event.
I also didn’t entirely buy into the characters. I understand that the ones who shared Jude & Kat’s upbringing would tend to be pretty black & white due to [spoiler], but others just seemed to lack nuance – they are saviors or bad guys.
All that said, I really felt like the story itself had a lot of originality, and the way many of the pieces came together in the end was beyond satisfying.
The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and a pickled human heart… for science.)
Book Nerd's Brain Candy 