Time for some mini-reviews! What are mini-reviews, you ask? As the title suggests, these are short reviews, consisting of one paragraph tops, about a book. It’s a way to catch up on the books I’ve read a while ago, but never got around to reviewing.
POE
Title: POE
Author: J. Lincoln Fenn
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal
Rating: 3 stars
Purchase: Amazon
2013 Winner — Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award — Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror
It’s Halloween, and life is grim for 23-year-old Dimitri Petrov. It’s the one-year anniversary of his parents’ deaths, he’s stuck on page one thousand of his Rasputin zombie novel, and he makes his living writing obituaries.
But things turn from bleak to terrifying when Dimitri gets a last-minute assignment to cover a séance at the reputedly haunted Aspinwall Mansion.
There, Dimitri meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer he falls hard for. But just as he’s about to ask her out, he unwittingly unleashes malevolent forces, throwing him into a deadly mystery. When Dimitri wakes up, he is in the morgue—icy cold and haunted by a cryptic warning given by a tantalizing female spirit.
As town residents begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, Dimitri must play detective in his own story and unravel the connections among his family, the Aspinwall Mansion, the female spirit, and the secrets held in a pair of crumbling antiquarian books. If he doesn’t, it’s quite possible Lisa will be the next victim.
Review: I thought it was young adult, turns out it’s not, but it still reads like one. Dimitri is an okay main character. I wasn’t really that fond of him, but he turned out all right. Aspinwall Mansion is almost a character on its own, and some of the scenes are deliciously creepy. The writing is atmospheric and suitable for a gothic horror novel. Unfortunately the story lacked originality, and while the writing was atmospheric and haunting, the book never really reached the creepy-level I’d hoped for.
The Creep
Title: The Creep
Author: Jonathan Case, John Arcudi
Genre: Comic, Graphic Novel, Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 4 stars
Purchase: Amazon
A young boy puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The police don’t care – not about his death or the death of his best friend two months earlier. The dead boy’s mom seeks help from an old flame that’s employed as a detective. What she doesn’t know is that he suffers from a physical deformity that manifests at midlife. Will the detective’s freakish appearance get in the way of uncovering the terrible secrets of these two teenagers? This collection features additional art by Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Ryan Sook, and Tonci Zonjic.
Review: Two young boys kill themselves months apart. Nobody seems to care, so the boy’s Mom calls in the help from a deformed detective. Atmospheric reading, a noir graphic novel where tragedy meets mystery and suspense, and one of the most intriguing casts of characters I’ve read about in a while. A definite recommendation for fans of horror / mystery.
Girls and Monsters
Title: Girls and Monsters
Author: Anne Michaud
Genre: Short Stories Collection, Dark Fiction, Horror
Rating: 3,5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
This dark but uplifting collection of five Young Adult novellas includes:
Death Song: Liz is in love with Joe, but the monster of the lake has other plans for them.
Black Dog: Scarlet is engaged in a struggle for her sanity, but according to the voice in her head, she may be too late.
A Blue Story: When Katherine’s beloved dog goes missing, she fears her strange new neighbor might be involved.
Dust Bunnies: Christiane faces her childhood arachnophobia and ends up confronting even greater fears in this test of sisterhood.
We Left at Night: Brooke and her family must abandon their home and their lives to make it out of a disease-plagued town overrun by zombies.
Girls & Monsters is for everyone who has ever been brave enough to confront their childhood fears…and lived to tell about it.
Review: Girls and Monsters is a short story collection, all featuring stories by Anne Michaud, and all stories have something to do with girls and monsters. The writing is of great quality overall, and the stories are original enough to entertain. “Dust Bunnies” was my favorite story, mostly because I’m scared of spiders, and this story played on that fear. Overall the stories offer unique twists, but I found “We Left at Night” to be a bit of a letdown.
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