What a quietly deceptive story. Oh my gosh, I loved it.
In it, Little Lea, a nineteen year old girl, is sitting on a bench overlooking the forest whenWhat a quietly deceptive story. Oh my gosh, I loved it.
In it, Little Lea, a nineteen year old girl, is sitting on a bench overlooking the forest when a man comes rushing up looking for his dog. Lea asks the man to have a seat, and warns him against chasing the dog into the woods. Wait, she says. The forest eats people up and refuses to spit them back out. But dogs... dogs will return to you. She begs him to be patient and asks him to share a joint while she tells him a story to help pass the time.
And the entire novella is just that... it's the story Lea tells the man about her family and their small town, and the dangers of the forest, and the end of their world, a world she claims has been slowly dying over the past year.
I know what you might be thinking. C'mon, a whole book that's just one long monologue? One hundred and sixty pages of a young girl smoking some weed on a bench with a strange dude. How is that a five star read? Ok, yes, it's that... but it's also so much more. It's about loving when you're not loved back. It's about loving the unlovable. It's about refusing to give up but knowing when to give in. And it's about making the tough decisions and doing the things you know no one else will do, knowing you'll come out forever changed in the end.
You guys, I fell straight in. Fully and willingly, bewitchingly, hopelessly, and just you wait.
Nope. I just can't do it. I know I requested this one and I appreciate the opportunity but I DNFd at 11%. Not digging the writing or the characters atNope. I just can't do it. I know I requested this one and I appreciate the opportunity but I DNFd at 11%. Not digging the writing or the characters at all. And such a shame because I thought it sounded good!
Watch this space. I am teeming back up with Jen in 2025 to help promote this one! We will be seeking reviewers, interviewers, blog features, etc. DM mWatch this space. I am teeming back up with Jen in 2025 to help promote this one! We will be seeking reviewers, interviewers, blog features, etc. DM me if you're interested!...more
I was excited to land a review copy of this one and had high hopes for it, and boy did it live up to the hype.
Oooh so many echoes of Follow Me to GroI was excited to land a review copy of this one and had high hopes for it, and boy did it live up to the hype.
Oooh so many echoes of Follow Me to Ground and Eartheater in this deeply atmospheric Appalachian folk story of a secluded family who, for generations, spend their lives tending to the cranberry bog on their property. And the bog, in return, is supposed to bless the eldest son with a bog-wife, a vegetal human-like being that will assist them in carrying on the family line.
The Haddesley children maintain the ritual, but the bog fails to deliver, and everything the siblings believed to be true is coming into question, crumbling around them like the walls and ceilings of the ancestral mansion they call home.
The polar opposite of her sun-blanched western novel, Desert Creatures, but just as intense and strange, The Bog Wife swims within a variety of genres - historical, gothic, fungal/eco, body horror - while sinking its fingers and toes into odd family rituals and claustrophobic landscape and legacies....more
I desperately wanted a review copy of this book because of how much I loved Tender Is the Flesh. And while I did not love The Unworthy as much as thatI desperately wanted a review copy of this book because of how much I loved Tender Is the Flesh. And while I did not love The Unworthy as much as that one, it definitely stands on its own amongst its dystopian peers.
Ecological disaster has caused humanity to fall and those who have survived are seeking protection and solace anywhere they can. Our protagonist scribbles out her story using anything she can find - ink, dirt, her own blood - in the hopes that someone may find it in the future and understand what she and the other women cloistered away with her in the Sacred Sisterhood had to endure for their continued survival.
As an Unworthy, she witnesses and is sometimes forced to participate in unspeakable religious rituals that are meant to cleanse, humiliate, torture, and (when push comes to shove) unalive others under the supervision of The Superior Sister and some mysterious man they hear but never see. She does her best to fly under the radar, generally avoiding the wrath of her peers and the ultimate bodily mutilation when one is chosen to ascend into the higher ranks.
Yet when a stranger claws her way through the convent walls, our narrator willingly puts herself at risk in the face of their growing friendship, and begins to seriously question the things that are going on under the roof of the Sisterhood, most especially with what's taking place behind the locked door where the Enlightened are kept.
A bleak, bizarre, brutal, violent, cultish religious existence in which everything is worse than it first appears, The Unworthy pokes and prods at you, testing your tolerance. It starts off rather curiously, and once it has your attention, begins to dig its nails in, pinching and scratching, relentlessly picking at the sore spot, watching patiently until you begin to reach your breaking point, and then it pounces, going straight for jugular....more
This is a wonderful #forthcoming collection of flash and short stories about monsters of all kinds - #vampires #werewolves #witches #ghosts #ghouls #aThis is a wonderful #forthcoming collection of flash and short stories about monsters of all kinds - #vampires #werewolves #witches #ghosts #ghouls #aliens and of course, the worst monster of all... humans!
Lori's debut contains some of the most human monsters and monstrous humans I've read in a while. The relatability factor is high with this one.
The Monsters Are Here is a unique mix of horror and urban fantasy with a little bit of sci-fi thrown in for fun and that makes it the perfect halloween sidekick.
The death of her aunt causes Liz and her younger sister Mary to return to the house they were raised in. The ancestral mansion appears to have been seThe death of her aunt causes Liz and her younger sister Mary to return to the house they were raised in. The ancestral mansion appears to have been severely neglected even though there's a groundskeeper still employed on property, and when Liz runs into her childhood neighbor and friend Julian, she quickly begins to realize something dark and evil has taken root there.
The book is steeped in Mexican and Indigenous culture and folklore, leaning heavily into the ancient gods, ghosts, and cryptids like El Coco, Chupacabra, La Muerte, and Xolotl who are tied to that unforgiving desert landscape, which was a cool space to world-build in. Who doesn't like dark, calamitous, and ruinous fiction, amirite??
That said, Sundown in San Ojuela is a fairly uneven debut which suffers from pacing issues. It's told from multiple characters' viewpoints, each written in a different POV - Liz and Mary's are told in third person; Julian is in second person; the Sheriff is in first. While initially off putting, it ended up working out for the best because once each character's chapter is first introduced, Olivas doesn't really bother to let us know whose chapter it is anymore. And in most instances, the plot is driven forward by revisiting the past in the form of flashbacks.
A few things to note: Liz developed the skill of clairvoyance as the result of a traumatic car accident when she was younger which plays heavily into the storyline and I'd recommend you play close attention to the prologue, which acts more as an opening chapter, since the events that take place in it are happening nearly simultaneously to the rest of the storyline and is not, as I had originally thought, something that has happened in the distant past...
I think I was left more confused with the way the story was told than with the actual story itself, although towards the end it feels like things just became overly and unnecessarily complicated with its many moving parts....more