In New York City near the southwest corner of 63rd Street and Madison Avenue, there is a restaurant called Stella’s and when everything started, I was sitting in one of its coveted lime-green velvet booths.
It was coming on ten at night, and I was drinking a lemongrass daiquiri. In all my years on the planet up to that point, I’d never touched lemongrass or daiquiris. Until that summer. That summer it seemed like it’s all I drank.
“Should I get you ladies started on a new one?” asked our waiter.
Our waiter was named Tommy, and he was a fortysomething Italian guy with slicked back hair who had the vaguely menacing solemn look of a Sopranos extra. But intimidating demeanor aside, he was always exceptionally nice to us. And when I say us, I mean my work cubicle mate, Priscilla Hutton, who was sitting across from me.
Priscilla and Tommy were actually old pals as she had been partying here at Stella’s since her Birch Wathen Lenox private high school days.
I did some high school partying myself back in my small town in Kentucky. Just never at a place that had nine-thousand-dollar bottles of champagne on the menu and a VIP room described in New York magazine as “Hollywood East.”
“The answer to that is yes, Tommy,” Priscilla said. “My friend and I need two fresh jolts stat. If that’s okay with you, Faye.”
Sometimes I wonder about that question. I wonder about what would have happened if I’d gone back to my apartment instead of accepting.
Or even more importantly, about what wouldn’t have.
“I’m game if you are,” I said, smiling.
The second drink order surprised me. We usually had only one polite drink at the end of the week here, down the street from our job, and then parted ways.
It was part of our unspoken deal. I hooked up Priscilla by handling all of our incredibly high-pressure work stuff, and Priscilla hooked me up by letting me hang out with her a little.
Even though I was totally carrying her, it was a good deal on both ends because Priscilla was gorgeous and rich and knew everyone in New York. She’d actually been in society pages like Avenue magazine ever since high school, each time tan and perfect in an effortlessly stylish outfit that she just threw on after a day spent surfing or skiing or at the spa.
Priscilla was also one of those people who had that voice, that eastern establishment rich person voice, that some call Transatlantic or Boston Brahmin or Locust Valley lockjaw. Not a ton of it, not a pretentious amount, just a sophisticated hint, an elegant tinge, just enough.
It made her sound like a young Lauren Bacall or Bette Davis or someone. I loved just listening to her. It made you feel a little special just to hear her confide in you, as if only for a few moments, you were in the privileged people club, too.
I really didn’t even know why Priscilla had applied for, let alone accepted, our summer internship. It was extremely hard work, and she was kind of a ditz, so why not just take the Instagram influencer route? I often wondered.
I think it had something to do with her father’s business, some defense contractor aerospace company in Connecticut that made airplane parts. Maybe she needed some finance experience to become an executive there? Not that she had told me any of this, but I did have internet access.
She even pretended to be my friend. She shared fashion advice with me, which was a sorely needed lesson. And she also told me all these incredible stories about her days in prep school and Yale and Palm Beach and the Hamptons.
At least at the office. When she was in the mood.
“But another?” I said as Tommy left. “That’s okay, Priscilla. I know you have things to do. I should be going.”
“No, not yet. I owe you big time, Kemosabe. If you hadn’t remembered to recheck the Westland account for me before it went to the treasury team, that Aiken would have dragged me up the stairs of the boiler room by the scruff of my neck.”
It was true. She had screwed up big time. One of our biggest hedge fund clients wanted $130 million wired into their Cayman account, but Priscilla had boneheadedly put in the account numbers of a completely different fund instead. Getting a number wrong here and there wasn’t a problem. Sending money into another fund’s account was. If it had gone through, the money could have instantly disappeared without a trace with no way to unwind it, and our client could have been out $130 million.
“Oh, that,” I said. “Don’t mention it. Anytime. I was looking for something to do anyway.”
That’s when Priscilla looked at me, and we both completely lost it.
Oh, we laughed then all right. Practically until the lemongrass came from our nostrils.
Looking for something to do, I thought, shaking my aching head.
That was a phrase I used way back in the normal life I led before I accepted the summer internship at the venerated Wall Street private investment bank, Greene Brothers Hale, nearly three months before.
Our musty-smelling windowless basement office a few blocks down Madison Avenue really did look like a boiler room or maybe something out of a Dickens poorhouse. Only with computers and phones on our cheap desks instead of dusty ledger books.
And out of these electronic torture devices, all day—for pretty much twelve hours straight from eighty-seven different pissed-off, stressed-out directions at once—came numbers.
The stress and anger directed our way was due to the fact that the numbers represented money. Profoundly massive amounts of money from hedge funds or institutional investors or just really, really rich people. This money either needed to be placed into our bank’s fat cat VIP client accounts or taken out of them and sent other places, places like the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.
You’d think this given task was simple enough like we were mere bank tellers, just moving around much larger sums.
But you would be wrong.
Each incoming or outgoing bank transfer had to be placed in its proper slot. Each one processed through a verification process wrapped in an amount of red tape to make your eyes bleed. Emails with these numbers had to go to the proper people for due diligence verifications. All in the proper order. Yesterday. Or else.
It was the volume of the orders. It was staggering. The air traffic controllers out at Kennedy airport had less to juggle.
Or maybe it was the unhinged wrath of the psychopathic traders and other finance people on the upper floors of our building who kept calling down to see if the transfers had cleared.
Where the hell was the money? they wanted to know. What the hell was wrong with us? Did they actually have to f-ing come down there?
Every morning when I sat down and looked at my newly filled inbox of waiting orders, I thought about the Greek hero, Sisyphus, cursed to eternally roll his rock up that hill.
In envy.
Was he a summer Wall Street intern, too? I would wonder.
And did I mention all of this labor and misery was being extracted from me gratis?
That was the kicker. Since it was an unpaid internship, we were only doing it for the possibility of maybe getting a full-time entry level job as a junior investment analyst.
My skin was being flayed for free.
As I sat there that Friday, attempting to cool my smoking brain with rum and lemongrass syrup, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d been duped.
Because I thought I was going to be a swashbuckling Wall Street pirate.
Instead, I’d been shanghaied and thrown into the slave galley to row.
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The best day of someone’s life is always the worst day of somebody else’s. This is especially true at a wedding—even more so when you’re separated.
Since her college graduation, Athena had been a bridesmaid in seventeen weddings. Twenty, if you count being in the house party, which Athena never did since it was the same as making it onto the junior varsity team, a consolation prize, an afterthought. Not bad, but not good enough for the big time.
For most of her twenties, she’d done the whole hog, Katherine Heigl, 27 Dresses. An overpriced and cheaply made gown for every wedding she’s been in, except for the one right after she came out, where the bride insisted Athena wear a tux so that the bride could showcase her acceptance and allyship to the one lesbian she’d ever known.
Now, at thirty-three—her Jesus year, as her mother so constantly reminds her—Athena drives down a Floridian highway full of billboards advertising Heaven and Hell to be a bridesmaid in her eighteenth wedding. Her longtime family friend, Daisy, is getting married in Watercolor, Florida, a sprawling beachside resort with large, spaced-out, two-story vacation homes, each painted in a distinct pastel color, like, as the name suggests, a watercolor palette. The wedding party had made their mantra for the weekend: Best Wedding Ever in the History of Weddings.
Athena knew that, for her, this could never be true. The best wedding Athena had been in was her own. To Sydnee. The great light of her life.
It was nothing like the other weddings, with their churches and their pomp and circumstance. It was small and full of lights that twinkled from tree branches and wrapped around columns on the back porch of Athena’s parents’ house. They didn’t need a priest, they had their best friend, Deacon, marry them, and he recited Dickinson instead of Second Corinthians, and they danced on the grass in bare feet until the neighbors complained about the noise. There was no prayer, but they still felt blessed.
It was the happiest day of Athena’s life.
Now, after six years, they are divorcing. The papers are due in the mail next week. They have been separated for eight months, and soon it will be official.
Divorce does not suit Athena. She’s been too busy burying herself in work to do anything about it. It’s as if she believes that sorting through the fragments of Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems in her tiny, dimly lit cubicle at the University of Houston can help heal her heartbreak without her ever having to face it straight on.
There’s always a snag, though, some little reminder of Sydnee, who never particularly liked literature. She did, however, love Athena and how much she loved Dickinson, so she had a few favorite poems of her own: Split the Lark—
and you’ll find the Music—was a much-loved line between the two of them.
“I like the way it sounds,” Sydnee explained. “It’s weird. Twisted.”
“Unnecessary bloodshed, uncanny music,” Athena said after they first moved into their house in Montrose when they settled down in Houston, a few months before their marriage. Athena was organizing her books and flipping through the pages of the poet’s collection. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of her.”
“And me?” Sydnee rested her head in her hand, her hair swaying to one side, a curtain of darkness.
“Maybe after seven lifetimes, I’ll start to get bored,” Athena said, and Sydnee smiled, and they came together like Athena thought they would continue to do for the rest of their lives.
When she comes across the line, or anything similar (I split the dew—But took the morn), her heart cleaves, an open wound. She tries to hide from it, but it always finds her eventually. Not even her most sacred pleasures are safe from the pain of separation.
As Athena drives, she imagines her mother would tell her to snap out of the past and keep her eyes peeled on the present. It’s your Jesus year, Thene, she could almost hear her mother saying through a jaw tensed with superstition. Her mother is obsessed with the concept and terrified of it, too. Thirty-three was Jesus’s age when he was crucified, betrayed by his friends, strung up for all the world to see. It feels like a warning to her. Nothing good can come from thirty-three. And your Jesus year? her mother would say. It’s trying to kill you.
Athena grips the steering wheel tight, closing her eyes for a moment, exhaling, before jolting back into awareness as she swerves slightly into the other lane.
Not today, Jesus year.
A gulp of coffee. A turned-up stereo. Athena slaps her cheek and drives on. In the rearview mirror, the horizon blares bright and blue with the high noon sun doing its best to heat up the unseasonably chilly November day. If the cold stays at bay, it’s going to be a beautiful weekend for a wedding.
After half an hour of nothing but pine trees and billboards, Athena finally exits the highway, passes the Publix, and finds herself in the strange, beautiful, pristine, idyllic world of Watercolor, Florida.
Athena and her brother used to join Daisy’s family on their weeklong trips to the resort during the summers in middle school and high school. It hasn’t changed much since then. It’s expanded, but otherwise remains timeless. People cruise down the paved roads in their three-row golf carts or beach cruiser bikes with baskets on the front, going from their homes, to the Publix down the road and to the beach club across the highway. The sidewalks are manicured and lined with pine trees and magnolias, the needles and leaves of which are finely collected on the sides of the paved walkways, never a twig out of place, giving the residents and guests a taste of nature without all the messiness it brings.
Back then, Athena loved the sun-soaked days at the beach, salt water settling into her hair, making it coarse and curly and wild. They spent summer nights riding up and down the streets on their bikes, going on ice cream and soda runs until their stomachs got sick. Life was simple then. Athena had been happiest here, after days spent diving into the crashing waves, riding their force toward the shore, her belly scraping the shallow sand once the wave died out and deposited her back where she belonged.
It’s November now. Too cold for waves, and she’s too old to ride them, anyway. Her back might tweak or her knee might shift in the tide at the wrong enough angle, leaving her sore for weeks. The world had seemed so open when she was young. She realized now the scope was much smaller. Caution cursed her every step because she had known consequences and understood they could come when you least expected it.
Athena’s father used to say that age gave you double vision. You see the world both as it is and as it was before. It’s like your friend says, he’d say, always referring to Emily Dickinson in this way, “the past is such a curious creature!”
She wonders what her father would think now. About Daisy’s wedding, about her own divorce. He’s been dead three years, and still, every day, she wonders what he’d say. Three years of questions. Three years without answers.
Athena blinks away the thought as she turns off the 30A highway into the massive, sprawling beach resort, circling past the bustling beach club before finally finding the towering town house where Daisy and the other bridesmaids will spend the night after the rehearsal dinner and then spend tomorrow getting ready for the wedding. It’s blindingly white, exactly like the row of townhomes it stands beside, with two decks that overlook the white sand beach and emerald coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Behind it, the midafternoon waves swell and crash onto the coast, the sun starting to sparkle in the water. All nature, no artifice.
Once she cuts the engine, Athena slowly gets out of the car, relishing her last moments of silence before the chaos of the wedding begins. The air is thick with humidity. She savors the smell of salt air and pine needles, happy to have the sun on her cheeks. She’s spent so many hours inside her office and classroom these past eight months. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the world—the natural, reviving tonic of fresh air and warmth.
“There she is,” a voice calls from the front door. “The divorcée.”
Deacon steps out from the house, an enormous grin stretched across his face. Tall, lean, and shirtless as always, he leans against the doorframe, two cups of coffee in his hands, his board shorts sagging slightly. He sets the coffees down and tugs up his shorts before walking over to Athena, his arms outstretched. His blond hair sticks up straight at the back, like he’s just woken up from a nap, and he traces the now faint and faded scars underneath his pecs, a habit he’d kept up for over a decade since he got them. Athena embraces her best friend, burying her face in his chest, the tufts of blond chest hair tickling her cheek.
“So,” Deacon says, pulling her away from him so that he can look at her. “How is the divorcée?”
“I told you that’s not funny yet.” Athena smiles despite herself.
“I guess I’ll keep doing it until it is,” Deacon says as he takes her arm in his. “Come on. I’ll show you to your designated chambers.”
They walk through the house, steering clear of the rest of the bridesmaids for the time being, and make their way to Athena’s room, which has one tiny twin bed.
“Doesn’t seem like Daisy has any faith that you’ll be hooking up at this wedding,” Deacon says, gesturing to the bed.
“What else is new.” Athena sets her bag down at the foot of the bed before taking the hot cup of coffee from Deacon. It’s strong, with a hint of vanilla and cinnamon. “What are the other dudes doing?”
“Getting ready for the rehearsal dinner.” Deacon checks his watch. “Still got a few hours, but Chad wants to experiment with gel in his hair. Doesn’t want to take a chance in case it’s terrible—which it will be—and he has to start over.”
“At least he’s thinking ahead,” Athena says. She pulls out her suit for the dinner and tugs at her messy bun. “Wish I could just gel this mess. My hair is driving me bonkers.”
“Shave it off,” Deacon says, digging through Athena’s bag. He removes a pair of her white sneakers and tries them on. “Can I borrow these tonight?”
“I can’t shave it, I have an egg-shaped head, we’ve discussed this,” Athena says. “And no, I’m wearing them.”
“More like a bowling pin.”
“Any cone-shaped object will do.” Athena points at the bridesmaid dress she will wear tomorrow. The lavender silk will hug every curve and constrict her breathing so badly she worries it will induce a semi—panic attack. “Wish Daisy would have let us choose our dresses.”
“She’s an influencer, Athena,” Deacon says, running the fabric of the dress through his hands. “The only thing that matters are the pictures, tagging her designer sponsor and making sure that everyone seems the same, and by same, I of course mean not quite as good as Daisy.”
“So I’m getting punished because she has half a million followers she needs to impress?”
“Dude, you’re going to look good, a real heartbreaker.” Deacon walks around in Athena’s sneakers, checking them in the mirror. “I’ll catcall you when you walk down the aisle if that makes you feel better.”
“Exactly what I need at all times, a mobile fan club, thank you very much for understanding.” Athena points at the sneakers and gestures toward her suit, trying to get him to take them off. “What about you? You getting ready with us tomorrow?”
“Bride’s orders.” Deacon nods as he takes off the shoes and puts them under Athena’s suit. “She wants me by her side every step of the way. Until the actual wedding. A guy standing with the bridesmaids would ruin the aesthetic. At this wedding, gender is very much a binary.”
“Why push boundaries when you could just reinforce them, right?” Athena says.
“Well, she’ll have plenty of pictures to post for all the trans awareness, appreciation, whatever-the-fuck hashtag weeks they come up with.”
“Gotta feed the followers.”
“Name of the game.” Deacon rubs his forearm slowly, tracing the tips of his fingers over his bluebonnet tattoo. “Talked to Sydnee recently? We’ll see her tomorrow. At the wedding.”
A jolt rushes through Athena. It happens every time she hears her name. When they first started dating, she’d get a similar flood of electricity. It is still a marvel: the dread, excitement, giddy joy contained in one name. The thought of her face is instinctual. The dark hair, curly when left untouched, hanging just above her shoulders. Her easy smile, her eyes, green unless in sunlight, when they transformed into an almost translucent blue. Her hands were always in motion, when she talked and when she was silent, where they’d move from the back of her neck to the front of it, fiddling with the crucifix necklace she wore every day, a reminder of her family and the Catholicism of her youth. She called it a bad habit, but Athena had always known that the comfort of home could take many forms.
“We’ve talked a bit,” Athena says, trying to play it cool. “You know lesbians and their exes. Always staying best friends.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.” Deacon opens his mouth to say more, but hesitates, tugging on the thin wisps of hair at the end of his chin instead. “I gotta shave or Daisy will kill me.”
“What is it?” A flush of panic heats through her. She’d dreaded this possibility so much it almost felt prescient, like she could sense Sydnee’s shifting heart, moving on from her to someone else without having seen her since she asked for the divorce. “She’s dating. Her. Isn’t she?”
“I thought you weren’t on social media anymore.”
“I knew it,” Athena says, kicking herself for talking through lawyers instead of staying in the loop. There is no dignity in silence. Knowing is always better than being blindsided. “I knew it was more than just sex.”
“I don’t think it’ll last…” Deacon trails off. He bites his lower lip. “It’s hard.”
“Staying faithful shouldn’t be hard.”
“I mean for me.” He clears his throat, his voice dropping in the hollow sort of way that means he’s telling the truth. “Y’all are both my friends…”
“Let’s just not talk about it,” Athena says quickly, going back to her suitcase and unpacking her pajamas. She gets up and puts them in the mahogany chest in the corner, her back to Deacon.
Athena is not willing to listen to other people talk about how her divorce has affected them. It is her pain, her isolation. She doesn’t want to be miserable, but she’s settled into her misery in such a way that it’s now become a part of her. Every step she takes is steeped in the stuff. No one can top her in terms of agony. Her father is dead. Her wife left her. There is nothing else that matters.
Deacon clears his throat. She senses his frustration, but does nothing to ease it. It’s not his fault that her marriage ended. Outside of her mom and brother, Deacon is the only person she’s willingly let into her life during this period of upheaval. He’s shown up for her. During their weekly meetups at their favorite pub, he chomps on fries as she regales him with all the reasons she should have seen the divorce coming. He never complains. He rarely talks about himself. He sits, and he listens, and Athena does nothing to change that. She does wonder, sometimes, when she’s alone and she can’t sleep, why he doesn’t stop her, why he always sits and takes it, all her anger, and all her frustration, and all of her grief. It’s a purgatory with an open exit that he never seems to take.
“Put down the coffee,” Deacon says before Athena can reflect further. “And get your tennis shoes.”
“What?” She puts her suitcase under the bed and clutches her coffee closer, not ready to leave so shortly after her arrival.
“We’re going for a run.”
“The rehearsal dinner’s in a few hours.”
“Just a quick one.” He fishes through Athena’s bag to find her running shoes and throws them at her. “Come on. Lace up. We need it.”
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In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle Moore’s very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement.
But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood.
Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.
HOUR OF THE WITCH BY CHRIS BOHJALIAN
Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary’s hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life.
But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary—a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony—soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary’s garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows.
SLEWFOOT: A TALE OF BEWITCHERY BY BROM
Connecticut, 1666: An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector.
The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil.
To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help.
Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan – one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake.
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In an extroverted world, introverts are often drawn to quiet, solitary careers, such as writing. As an introvert who is happy spending plenty of time alone, especially one who works remotely as a writer, it can be easy to neglect self-care. Plus, introverts tend to struggle with overthinking, perfectionism, and a reluctance to seek help, all of which can lead to overwork, burnout, and chronic stress. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can strike a harmonious balance between nurturing your body and mind and harnessing your unique creative strengths as a writer!
Pursue Fulfilling Career Goals
Setting career goals is a great way to give your mental health a boost. According to Positive Psychology, goal-setting can help you align your focus and promote a sense of self-mastery. If you’d like to take your writing career further, think about how you can use your skills in other
positions. For example, you could work in education as a creative writing teacher. Keep in mind that this might mean going back to school and getting a bachelors od education. Online universities can be a great option for introverts! Look for accredited online schools that offer bachelor’s education degrees at competitive tuition rates.
When it comes to hunting for your next job, be prepared to step out of your comfort zone. You’ll interact with several people during your job search. Writing a cover letter is a great way to break the ice and increase your chances of landing an interview. To write an engaging cover letter, be sure to research the company you’re applying to and mention any connections you have.
Avoid Unhealthy Coping Behaviors
Due to their contemplative nature, introverts are prone to stress. Introverts also tend to face more anticipatory anxiety, which means your stress response is constantly firing. While alcohol can offer temporary relief from stress and anxiety, this coping behavior can have long-term negative effects and even increase your anxiety levels over time. If you’re struggling to cut back on drinking, consider finding treatment help nearby. Choose a rehab center that offers the type of treatment you need. If cost is an issue, look for facilities that offer free treatment services through government health programs.
Embrace Self-Compassion
Introverts are highly self-reflective. While this introspection can fuel your creativity, it can also lead to you to become overly self-critical. Introverts frequently set exceptionally high standards for themselves and can be relentless in their pursuit of perfection. This self-imposed pressure can result in feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. Embracing self-compassion is crucial! Psychology Today suggests looking for reasons to be proud of your introversion. Leaning into your strengths, such as your creativity, listening skills, and outside-the-box thinking can help you be more forgiving of your perceived flaws.
Set Boundaries
Setting boundaries is of utmost importance if you’re an introvert, as this allows you to safeguard your alone time and recharge when needed. Without clear boundaries, you may find yourself overextending, both in your social life and your professional life as a writer. This can lead to burnout and a decline in the quality of your work. Establish limits with friends, family members, and even your freelance clients to preserve your energy and communicate your needs to others. This process can also be incredibly empowering and provide a boost to your confidence!
Introverted or extroverted, self-care should be at the top of everyone’s priority list. Introverts, in particular, need regular self-care to manage the overwhelm of existing in a world that values extroversion. By pursuing your career goals through online education, seeking help for negative coping behaviors like drinking, and learning how to forgive yourself and advocate for your needs, you can nurture your creativity as a writer while forging a path to greater well-being.
Guest blog post by Stephanie Haywood, read her previous guest blog post HERE and HERE or visit her website: MY LIFE BOOST.
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“All leads will be followed. But you and Alice Ogilvie didn’t do that. Just like before, you went full steam ahead on your own, and now look where you are.”
PLOT SUMMARY:
How do you solve a murder? Follow the lessons of the master—Agatha Christie! Iris and Alice find themselves in the middle of another Castle Cove mystery in the sequel to New York Times bestseller The Agathas, by powerhouse authors Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson.
Alice Ogilvie and Iris Adams became the talk of Castle Cove when they cracked the biggest case of the fall: the death of Brooke Donovan. Together, the Agathas put Brooke’s killer away for good, and since then things around town have been almost back to normal. Quiet, even.
But if Alice and Iris know anything, it’s that sometimes quiet is just the calm before the storm. The truth is, Brooke’s disappearance wasn’t the first mystery to rock Castle Cove, and it won’t be the last. So when their school dance at the infamous Levy Castle—the site of film starlet Mona Moody’s unsolved death back in the 1940s—is interrupted by a violent assault, Iris and Alice pull out their murder boards and get back to work.
To understand the present, sometimes you need to look into the past. And if the Agathas want a chance at solving their new case, that’s exactly where they’ll need to start digging. Only, what they uncover might very well kill them.
GRADE: A
REVIEW:
The Night in Question is the highly anticipated sequel of The Agathas that features Agatha Christie aficionado Alice Ogilvie and her unlikely partner in sleuthing Iris Adams. This time Alice and Iris have to try to figure out who assaulted one of their classmates during the Sadie Hawkins dance and what truly happened to famed film star Mona Moody in the 40’s when she accidentally fell off of the balcony at Levy Castle.
This was very fast-paced and read like a cozy mystery, although terrible/violent things did happen! I also liked that Glasgow and Lawson kept their teen detectives credible in what they could manage to find out and how. This sequel was jam-packed with mysteries and reveals and I loved how everything tied up at the end. I also liked that they didn’t necessarily get a happy ending, making this more realistic, but also kind of setting up for another book (I’d love a book three!).
The Levy Castle setting and old Hollywood link to it was part of the allure of this book, not to mention that I loved Alice and Iris’s friendship and how well they work together as wannabe Veronica Mars. But I also like how Glasgow and Lawson show how much trouble the two teens could actually get into if they actually try to help and how law enforcement barely acknowledges them whenever they actually crack a case.
This is a fun read and I recommend this if you’re a fan of teen detectives and cozy mysteries.
*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
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Sisters Anna and Jennie live in a historic bungalow on the Chicago River. They’re tethered to a disquieting past, and with nowhere else to go, nothing can part them from their family home. Not the maddening creaks and disembodied voices that rattle the old walls. Not the inexplicable drownings in the area, or the increasing number of bodies that float by Anna’s window.
To stave off loneliness, Anna has a podcast, spinning ghostly tales of Chicago’s tragic history. But when Anna captures the attention of an ardent male listener, she awakens to the possibilities of a world outside.
As their relationship grows, so do Jennie’s fears. More and more people are going missing in the river. And then two detectives come calling.
They’re looking for a link between the mysteries of the river and what’s housed on the bank. Even Anna and Jennie don’t understand how dreadful it is—and still can be—when the truth about their unsettled lives begins to surface.
GRADE: A
REVIEW:
When I read The Shoemaker’s Magician earlier this year, I thought that it definitely was one of my fave horror thrillers because it had everything I loved rolled into one novel – however, with Forgotten Sisters Pelayo taps into other things I absolutely love – The Little Mermaid, historical tragedies, and a mysterious killer on the loose. Some authors are linked to their location, such as Anne Rice with New Orleans, or Stephen King with Maine, and whenever I think of Pelayo and her writing I link her to Chicago – and love discovering and learning more about this city through her novels.
This novel is a modern retelling of The Little Mermaid but it’s also a ghost story of sorts (I don’t want to delve too much into detail because I think it’s important to find out on your own). But it’s also about the strength of sisterly love since the novel mostly focuses on the relationship between Anna and Jennie. The house they live in is next to a river, and soon both the house and river become important characters within the world of the novel as the people who inhabit it. A lot of this novel reads like a Gothic novel in regards to the two sisters spending most of their time indoors whilst being burdened by ghosts and odd noises. Young men have begun to go missing and show up dead in the river weeks and months later, sparking thoughts of a serial killer, although the police wish to not acknowledge that they may be dealing with one for fear of alarming the public.
A lot of the book is read like a poetic fever dream and works well in regards to its fairytale roots, so it never bothered me that the two sisters spoke like they were Dickensian characters (once you reach the end you’ll understand why). I know some may think that the love that blossomed between Anna and Peter was what some readers would call “insta-love” but really – I felt that it was possible for the two of them to fall for each other as quickly as they did when they had spent so much time exchanging emails prior (I’ve always been a sucker for long emails and letters between people I’m fond of and understand how a relationship can evolve from that rather quickly).
This novel was unique as it was an amalgamation of thriller, horror, crime, history, and fantasy all rolled into one unique story. I recommend this for those who lean towards Gothic atmospheres in their books and enjoy a slower-paced murder mystery.
*Thank you so much to NetGalley & Thomas & Mercer for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
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When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits with an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill and high-stakes party game — until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.
A new take on possession that’s brutal, unexpected, and highly terrifying! I watched this movie twice within a 12-hrs span.
TOTALLY KILLER
Thirty-five years after the shocking murders of three teens, an infamous killer returns on Halloween night to claim a fourth victim. When 17-year-old Jamie comes face-to-face with the masked maniac, she accidentally time-travels back to 1987. Forced to navigate the unfamiliar culture, Jamie teams up with her teenage mother to take down the psycho once and for all.
This is a mash-up between a slasher and Back to the Future. It’s fun and thrilling, and Kiernan Shipka is always a delight.
NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU
Brynn finds solace within the walls of the home where she grew up until she’s awakened one night by strange noises from unearthly intruders.
Usually, alien invasion films aren’t my cup of tea, but this one was thrilling from the very first scene until the very end. You never have a chance to catch your breath, and Kaitlyn Dever is a powerhouse in a movie that she carries on her own and with barely any dialogue at all.
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“We’re each dealt our own unique affliction, Alice. Ours is death. Yours? Yours is life.”
PLOT SUMMARY:
Our Own Unique Affliction is the story of Alice Ann, a dejected immortal who longs for her life in the sun. Navigating guilt, loss, family, meaning, murder, and all that comes with the curse of living forever. An existential bleak, quiet until it’s not, hallucination on duality, rife with fangs, empathy, blood, and grief.
GRADE: A-
REVIEW:
Full disclosure, vampires are my favourite supernatural creature, but since they are my favourite, I usually don’t watch or read many books or movies that feature them because I am personally picky when it comes to vampires. My biggest gripe with most vampire books is the author leans too much on making them romantic heroes that they tend to forget or downplay the monstrous aspects that make these creatures absolutely terrifying. Alice Ann is no such vampire. Yes, she holds some smidgen of humanity but she’s also a brutal monster – and it’s a perfect balance. Alice Ann yearns for a life under the sun – and her memories of her family when she was human are viscerally moving and sad – especially when she sees immortality as a curse. I wasn’t too drawn to the human that essentially drove her and her sister around in a truck everywhere (I’m always iffy about humans that work for vampires or vampires relying on humans – it always seems like an odd relationship that will end up derailing at some point – and in the case of this novella it did just that). Usually, book endings are something that I don’t always like because most are lackluster even when the story has been amazing – however, Moses lands the perfect ending for this book – and it couldn’t have been better.
Read this if you like vampires, philosophical musings about mortality, and grief horror.
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I’m drawn to him because of this lingering ferocity I see in men- the possibility of violence.
PLOT SUMMARY:
At a meatpacking facility in the Missouri Ozarks, Dee-Dee and her co-workers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift. The work is repetitive and brutal, with each stab and cut a punishment to her hands and joints, but Dee-Dee’s more concerned with what is happening inside her body. After a series of devastating miscarriages, Dee-Dee has found herself pregnant, and she is determined to carry this child to term.
Dee-Dee fled the Pentecostal church years ago, but judgment follows her in the form of regular calls from her mother, whose raspy voice urges Dee-Dee to quit living in sin and marry her boyfriend Daddy, an underemployed ex-con with an insect fetish. With a child on the way, at long last Dee-Dee can bask in her mother’s and boyfriend’s newfound parturient attention. She will matter. She will be loved. She will be complete.
When her charismatic friend Sloane reappears after a twenty-year absence, feeding her insecurities and awakening suppressed desires, Dee-Dee fears she will go back to living in the shadows. Neither the ultimate indignity of yet another miscarriage nor Sloane’s own pregnancy deters her: she must prepare for the baby’s arrival.
GRADE: A
REVIEW:
If this book were a series, it’d be “bingeable.” Once you begin reading about Dee-Dee and her insect-obsessed boyfriend, Daddy, you can’t stop. The prose is raw and intimate in ways that will hit you emotionally at the core. Full disclosure, I have a phobia when it comes to insects, so the description of insects being placed on body parts was absolutely terrifying for me. But Nash also had me feeling sorry for these same insects later on in the novel, so that goes to show her deftness in being able to conjure pity even for creatures that I’d rather not have anywhere near me.
Dee-Dee becomes fixated with wanting to be pregnant, and this fixation leads her to tell her partner, Daddy that she’s indeed pregnant, despite her not actually being it. Her life begins to derail once her high school friend and fellow member of a church they both went to begins to live upstairs from her. Dee-Dee is convinced that Sloane wants to steal Daddy from her and that she’s trying to conspire against her. The book flashes between the present and the past, and in both places you can’t help but to feel sorry for Dee-Dee, especially in her present where she’s physically and emotionally exhausted by an occupation and relationship that suck so much out of her, without really feeling gratified by either.
Dee-Dee is a sympathetic character, and you can’t help but to root for her, despite her misgivings and the fact that the reader can sense that there’s a tragedy afoot and you’re sitting on pins and needles waiting to see just how much more terrible her life can really get.
I know this is categorized as horror by some people, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s horror in the way that people define horror – rather it’s horrific in its realness and that can be much scarier than anything supernatural ever could. I recommend this book if you enjoy dark lit, twisted relationships/friendship, and true crime.
*Thank you so much to the author for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
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The Inkblotters 