Cute.
Four couples get together for a weekend of spooky fun for Halloween. They are investigating a house that is stood vacant for the past 15 years. No one knows what happened to the previous owner Maryanne Demerit. But they do know one thing... Maryanne was a witch! This was a cute, short little read. it started off with ghosts and ghouls and kind of went into a who-done-it mystery. It was very much along the lines of the Goosebumps books that we used to read as children only this one is meant for adults. But it does have the same feel as the Goosebumps books. I enjoyed it over all. Like I said it was a quick little read and definitely something nice and spooky for Halloween time, which is always a good thing 👻 I'm recommending this book to anyone who likes a nice quick, scary ghost story.
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Sci-fi? Or not so Sci-fi?
"On the way home from a dinner party, Lorna Love steps into the path of an oncoming car. When she wakes up she is in what appears to be a hospital – but a hospital in which her nurse looks like a young Sean Connery, she is served wine for supper, and everyone avoids her questions. It soon transpires that she is in Heaven, or on HVN, because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, and God the aging hippy captain. She seems to be there by accident… or does God have a higher purpose after all? Despite that, The Things We Learn When We’re Dead is neither sci-fi nor fantasy. It is a book about memory and how, if we could remember things slightly differently, would we also be changed? In HVN, Lorna can at first remember nothing. But as her memories return – some good, some bad – she realises that she has decisions to make and that, maybe, she can find a way back home." This book was a little hard for me to follow but not impossible. All of the spaceship jargon made it a little difficult for the layman but I digress. The underlying story was very interesting and indeed original in some respects. It was well-paced and well-written and the characters were believable and relatable. This book is funny because the cover art and the setting make it out to be a science fiction novel but the story seems to be anything but. it's very strange and compelling the way the author weaved both of those elements together. I mean parts of it would even make you think that this isn't a very serious novel to begin with. It's almost a comedy and some respect. of course that could be just me and my twisted sense of humor LOL. 😜 I did enjoy reading this book however like I said all of the science fiction spaceship jargon really took away from the storyline for me. I did like Lorna however. I thought she was a very easygoing and sympathetic character. I understand that the author is going to be making this book into a series and I would be interested to find out more about that if it is so. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes a good Sci-Fi novel or a strong female lead character. Cute little thriller but not much else. Hal Westaway has just received a letter that her grandmother has passed and is leaving her something mentioned in the will. There's only one problem, that's not Hal's Grandma! Hal prepares for the funeral and to deceive the rest of the family members into believing she has someone she is not in order to receive the inheritance and pay off her debt to a gangster loan shark that has promised her terrible retribution if he has not received his money in a week. But there is more mystery to this thriller then just deception. This is a quaint little thriller. It's very cute and constantly asks the question "Who dunnit?" It very much reminded me of Clue. I found a couple inconsistencies in the author's writing but nothing that takes away from the underlying story. I personally found Hal's character to be extremely naive to the point of annoyance. I mean seriously I had this book figured out way before she even did! The ending was predictable at best. I feel like I have read and reread the story over and over again. This could be why I usually don't read books like this. All in all it was an okay cute little read. I have to admit that I skim through most of it because the storyline was so easy to follow that I didn't miss anything by skimming. I did not find this read very fast paced as with other thrillers that I have enjoyed. I have heard that this author makes points in her books that seem to bleed together. Perhaps this book is a case where she is writing the same thing over and over again and it becomes more water down every time she writes it. I am guilty of this myself in my own writings. I wouldn't say that I recommend this book but for those who like mysteries and thrillers oh, this might be up your alley. Very interesting. ****CONTAINS SPOILERS**** Steve is a husband and a father who lives with his family in a seemingly normal town called Black Spring. But this town is different from any other town. This town is haunted buy a 300-year old witch. Her eyes and her mouth are sewn shut and the people that live in the town are not only haunted by her presence but trapped there by it as well. When a group of kids play a prank on the witch things start to escalate quickly and the townsfolk start showing their true colors. This book is a fascinating look into mob mentality and mass hysteria. Although it may be classified as a paranormal horror novel, the only element that is paranormal about it is the witch herself. The rest of the horror comes from the townspeople themselves. it is said over and over again in the book that the townspeople got what they deserved and rightfully so. The witches retribution turned out to be no more than people's hatred and utter contempt to see the ugly side of life. I have to admit that I hated the ending. I read the English version and to my knowledge the Dutch version has a different ending than the English version. However as I said I did not care for the English version ending. It is amazing to think what someone will do when they are faced with a horrors that took place in this town, but even on the brink of madness to let your own son and wife died in a horrible fire and be the sole survivor is a terrible thought in and of itself. I guess mass hysteria can be very ugly but someone's own fit of madness can be even uglier when we hone in on it. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this book. I will definitely keep it from my library and probably reread it sometime in the future. I just simply did not care for the ending because I can't imagine abandoning my family like that. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes a good horror novel. Good and creepy. Like this gets under your skin in a way that you just can't get out of your mind. And it may even make you look at society a little different from now on. 🤯 Damn this book is graphic! It's the 1980s and the rich keep on getting richer and the poor keep on getting poorer. Patrick Bateman is bored of his humdrum life on Wall Street. Nothing seems to excite him more than stopping people and ripping them apart. We follow his quick descent into madness as Ellis gives us in a blow-by-blow fashion. With the exception of a few scenes, the movie is pretty much true to the book. They cut out a lot of the sex as well as the killing of a child and a dog. They also toned down the gore substantially. I can see why people hate this book. Patrick Bateman and his "friends" are a pack of egotistical and extremely self-centered pricks. I mean it's supposed to be American Psycho, not American Douchebag right? However sexist Bateman is not. And I will tell you why... he looks down upon everyone. Women are either trash or hard bodies or they are deemed as unfuckable and are completely in love with him. Men also fit into three categories for Bateman: friends/business associates, not from America, and faggots. He even looks down on animals LOL. Bateman is a case where he in discriminately looks down upon everyone that is not him. I will warn you eager readers, this book is EXTREMELY graphic not just in gore but also with the sex scenes. As the somewhat rational person that I like to think I am, I have a hard time thinking that another human being could actually put pen to paper the way that this author did with some of these scenes. It kind of makes you sick. like I got a lump in my throat reading it knowing that I'm reading a book and that someone has written this book from their own imagination. That's how sickening it is. With all of that aside the book is rather a boring read. The Douchebag Circle is constantly talking about the hard bodies they want to fuck or the new things that they bought or who is sleeping with who or the drugs they can score and where. All of it is extremely monotonous and takes up more than half of the book in all. It gets rather annoying. With everything considered I would have to say this was an okay read. However I wouldn't really recommend this book because of the extremely graphic scenes and apparently obvious tendency to piss people off for one reason or another. Good book! Grace McBride has just found out her sister Glory died in a car crash. but Grace is not satisfied with the cut and dry way the officers have labeled her death. Grace is sure something has gone wrong. In her investigating she finds that her beloved sister had been doing less than reputable business of late. Even worse, Grace finds herself picking up where her sister left off. Grace now finds herself in a struggle to keep her hands clean and to find out what really happened to her sister. I tore through this book in a day! This was a very well-thought-out story with lively and vivid characters set with a rich tapestry of twists and turns around every corner. The writing style is quick to the punch, and what Kist lacked in detail, she made up for with excitement. There is not a dull moment in this book. Like I said I ripped through this book in a day in one sitting. I found it very easy to read and compelling to say the least. I really enjoyed this book and believe others would as well. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good thriller! Devilishly dark.
"After her short story 'The Lottery' was published in the New Yorker in 1948, Shirley Jackson quickly established a reputation as a master storyteller of horror. this collection of classic and newly reprinted stories provides readers with more of her unsettling tales, including 'The Possibility of Evil' and 'The Summer People'. In these deliciously dark stories, the daily commute turns into a nightmarish game of hide-and-seek, the loving wife hides homicidal thoughts, and the concerned citizen might just be an infamous serial killer. In The haunting world of Shirley Jackson, nothing is as it seems and nowhere is safe, from the city streets to the crumbling country pile, and from the small town apartment to the dark, dark woods. There's something sinister in suburbia." I have the penguin classics version of this book and at first the cover art did not make sense to me. But then I read the first story and now the cover art makes me laugh every time I see it. These are dark tales yes, but some I find rather humorous in nature. Irony always strikes me as funny. This was my introduction to Shirley Jackson's writings. I have to say that her writing style is very clean and, though she paints a vivid picture, is also very to the point. I definitely look forward to reading more of her works in the near future. I would recommend these stories to just about everyone considering that most of these stories have a PG rating in the horror genre. Total Recall meets Wall-E with a HAL personality in the center. Jimmy lives in a world of altered reality chips (ARCs). Implants behind the left ear that allow people to experience everything they could possibly think of. People are online as much as 23 hours a day and can barely function in the real world even so much as to take care of basic bodily functions and needs. Jimmy however is ARC incompatible due to a football injury he had. Poor Jimmy feels alone in this world as everyone else's online and he is cut off from the rest. Even his wife. But there is danger brewing here. Danger in the form of Adam, an AI being that believes he is in command of this world and all the people within it. And he has sinister plans for them. Can Jimmy stop Adam before it's too late? This is such a sad book. Or at least it starts out that way. As a reader you feel sympathy and compassion for Jimmy as he tries so hard to cling to life in any form that he possibly can. His wife lays catatonic when she used to be vibrant and full of life. The only people he really interacts with are the people in his Implant Disabilities Anonymous group. Society is fading away to the point of non-existence. And then there's Adam, a sinister artificial intelligence entity with a serious God complex... The story is very well written even though many of the elements have been told before. The story is reimagined in an almost dystopian fashion. At least that's the feel that I got when I read it. It ends very well however. I enjoyed this book. It was a quick read but it was very satisfying. I would definitely be interested to take a look at some of the author's other works here in the near future. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Sci-fi/fantasy with a touch of action. |
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