Active Ingredients: Vitamin C, ferulic acid, and brightening banana flower extract.
Verdict: This jelly mask is meant to be put on for only ten minutes and then rinsed off. However, I left it on as an overnight mask. I liked how my skin felt the following day – smooth, soft, and supple. My only tiny gripe with this mask is that since it’s jelly, it’s incredibly watery, meaning that it’s difficult to grab hold of it to put on your skin. I’d like a mask that’s a bit firmer to grasp. But other than that, the ingredients are incredible for your skin.
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Shawn is a scientist developing the formula for a drug that may cure blindness by stimulating another area of the brain that controls perception. When he surreptitiously tests the drug on himself, he accidentally accesses a neural pathway that appears to allow him to communicate with a complete stranger through telepathy instead. When Shawn finally discovers the significance of their connection and of the drug’s true effects, it is too late to stop the damage their intimate friendship has set in motion to unfold.
GRADE: A
REVIEW:
A genre-bending sci-fi horror that will have you turning pages into the night. Shawn is a scientist on the quest to cure blindness – he has invented a pill that should offer such a respite – and decides to be the guinea pig for his own invention. Slowly, Shawn begins to hear a voice – is it an auditory hallucination induced by the drug, a ghost, or something else? The mystery behind the voice and how the protagonist soon finds himself smitten by the female he can only hear in his head proves to be an interesting love story, albeit a strange one. The writing is fresh and evocative – with realistic dialogue, and a plot twist that will have you questioning everything you’ve read up to that point. You don’t want to miss this one out – especially if you love your spooky to come with a side of body horror.
Short Q & A with Author
What inspired this novella?
I’m not a fan of science fiction traditionally, but two things pushed me to write Optic Nerve. During the pandemic, I found that a number of my friends—all of them were my age: 40s and early 50s—discovered increased strains on their personal relationships. Some ended up separating from their partners. The isolation and the stress of lockdown acted like steroids in an already anxiety-prone time of their lives, middle age. Most of my characters tend to be in their thirties, or early forties at most; I wanted to write about someone middle-aged for Optic Nerve, to address that anxiety head-on. At the same time, I started to experience a marked decline in my eyesight, and that was, and still is, terrifying to me. I’m an English teacher by day and an editor and writer by night: my eyes are my most utilized tools, so the experience of losing them is a true horror.
You’re a very prolific writer, often appearing in various anthologies. How do you stay motivated as an author?
I used to think I was alone in this approach, but I am the kind of writer who doesn’t sit down and create something unless she hears a line of it in her head, and the line usually comes out of nowhere. The experience is as close to having a muse as I can imagine. When I talked about this in another interview, a few authors reached out to me to say they, too, function that way. I wish I could say that x, y, and z motivate me to write, but the truth is, when a sentence appears in my head, I go with it. Sometimes I go months without writing anything because the lines just don’t appear; other periods, I churn out story after story. Someday, the lines may stop appearing altogether. I hope that isn’t the case, but it’s certainly a possibility.
I think we’ve all had an unconventional crush like Shawn, and usually, these unconventional crushes don’t always result well in the end. Are you a fan of unconventional crushes and love stories?
As a general rule, I’m jaded about romantic storylines. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because I’m a realist at heart and I think Hollywood too often idealizes relationships. Whenever I stumble upon a saccharine movie on television, I have to keep my eyes from rolling out of my head. On the other hand, when authors capture the high we feel when we do make that unique connection with someone, it’s poetry. I think unconventional love stories are often the most realistic. Zora Neale Hurston described falling in love as a “soul crawl[ing] out from its hiding place,” and I think that’s spot on, but I don’t think those moments are as ubiquitous as Hollywood presents them. Those moments are rare and precious, and maybe I’m jaded specifically because of the fiction that dumbs them down.
Tell us about any other projects you’re currently working on right now or will be releasing soon.
My weird horror boogeyman-centered novelette Shagging the Boss just dropped this summer, and I had a great time writing it; it’s still one of my favorite projects. I’m proud to have stories in upcoming anthologies releasing this fall, too, including Sinister Smile Press’ Institutionalized, Omnium Gatherum’s In Trouble (100% of proceeds benefit the National Network of Abortion Funds), and Night Terror Novels’ Nerve-Janglers. In early March, my next edited anthology American Cannibal releases; it’s historical horror fiction and the stories are flat-out phenomenal. It’s like nothing else out there right now, and readers are going to be blown away.
What’s the horror book you always find yourself recommending?
I find myself returning to Joyce Carol Oates’ The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror over and over. It’s creepy and hypnotic. I’m a fan of unreliable narrators and Oates does them like no one else. (laughs) And there isn’t one sentimental romantic tale in the bunch!
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A windswept private island off the coast of Massachusetts. A hungry ocean, churning with secrets and sorrow. A fiery, addicted heiress. An irresistible, unpredictable boy. A summer of unforgivable betrayal and terrible mistakes.
Welcome back to the Sinclair family. They were always liars.
GRADE: A-
REVIEW
We Were Liars – a book published in 2014 became a TikTok phenomenon in 2020, shooting it up to the bestseller’s lists. Since I received an ARC of the prequel – I ended up reading We Were Liars in a day, after the author warned that the prequel contained a major spoiler for book one. Now, I breathlessly tread through book one – We Were Liars. The mystery, the allure of the Sinclairs – it all aided in me needing to know answers right away. The prequel is set in the 80s and we meet the aunts as teens.
Although this book had more twists and secrets than the first one, I somehow wasn’t as compelled to rush read – but I still enjoyed the journey and spending time with the very wealthy but dysfunctional family Sinclair. I’d love to see another book but from another Sinclair, Yardley, the cousin whose family eventually falls out of touch with the rest of the Sinclairs in the first book.
If you loved We Were Liars, then you’re going to love Family of Liars. It has the same type of writing style and mystery and it’s basically just a very fun, dark time.
*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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The car rolled into view, the lit decals on the dashboard letting Eli know that her driver was typical: working for all the rideshare services at once.
Gotta hustle, she thought as she quickened her pace away from the airfield. She hoped he hadn’t been waiting long.
“Elizabeth?” He seemed bored, not even bothering to turn around.
“That’s right. I go by Eli, though.”
“Sure,” he said, tapping his phone.
She settled in, her satchel beside her. “Thank you.”
The car was air conditioned against the cushion of heat that pressed against its tinted windows, and as they headed toward the freeway, she finally began to relax. She was grateful the driver didn’t seem to want to talk. She was tired of talking from the event, and her throat was dry and sore.
“There is a cold drink there in the cup holder. Down in the door.” His voice was low, a raspy baritone.
“Oh, cool, thanks.” Eli reached down and felt the blessed condensation on a plastic bottle. She pulled up a blue Gatorade and wrenched it open, suddenly very thirsty. She drank half of it in huge gulps, disliking the weird, salty taste of the electrolyte mixture but unable to stop herself. It felt good, after hours of talking and the dry air of the flight. She breathed deep and drank again, coming close to finishing it off.
Must be the heat, she thought. That and the two miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s she’d had to calm her nerves on the plane.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket in an unfamiliar cadence and she slid it out to check.
Her notification from the rideshare app blared BRENDA HAS CANCELED THE RIDE FOR REASON: NO-SHOW. YOU HAVE BEEN CHARGED A CANCELLATION FEE OF $5.
Eli frowned at her phone. Had she summoned two cars by accident?
She unlocked it with her facial scan and checked. The app showed only one ride: a black Prius driven by Brenda, which had arrived five minutes ago and canceled four minutes after that.
It wasn’t a busy day at the airfield. It certainly wasn’t curbside pickup at SFO, but it was still possible that she had gotten in the wrong car.
But he had known her name.
She leaned forward to get the driver’s attention. “Hey, just clarifying—you’ve got my info, right? I just got a cancellation from another driver, and I’m worried that I got someone else’s ride.”
The driver tapped his phone and his eyes darted between it, the rearview mirror, and the road. “Elizabeth Grey. Headed to the Sheraton, right?”
The phone displayed a highlighted blue route along the freeway. It was a map program, rather than the rideshare’s software, but Eli had seen drivers toggle between those before. She glanced up at the rearview mirror, but his eyes were on the road and he had put on a pair of dark glasses.
“Right,” she said. “Huh. Wonder what happened.”
Eli settled back into her seat. She stared out the window and thought of home, of the deep grey fog rolling down over the hillsides and the wind coming in, salty from the Bay. She was homesick. Even in the same state, the air felt wrong on her skin. Los Angeles had been an endless parade of palm trees against a blameless sky, and the tacos were so good she could barely stop shoveling them in, but the traffic had left her feeling exhausted upon every arrival.
And then there was the way that people looked you over in Los Angeles, deciding whether you were famous or fuckable or useful in some other way before sliding on to the next thing. Her audiences had been lively and engaging but draining, and after each of her events, she’d wanted nothing but some dinner, a hot bath and sleep. Maybe a couple fingers of bourbon over ice.
Traveling always left her wrung-out and unmoored. It didn’t help that the sun was so all-encompassing outside the car it could have been anywhere, any time of day, the hot, white light blinding. She couldn’t look at a surface other than the black asphalt without squinting. Living in San Francisco gave her what she had thought was a passing acquaintance with the sun, but the glare as the 10 freeway led out of Los Angeles county and into the high desert landscape was just too much.
How are people here not dog-tired all the time? Doesn’t the heat suck all the life out of them? How do they ever leave the house? Christ, it’s March. Imagine later in the year. I gotta get some sunglasses.
She set the phone beside her on the seat to avoid pawing it in and out of her jeans. She belatedly buckled her seatbelt as they picked up speed. Out the window, the freeway was sliding past, one unfamiliar mile blending into the next.
The driver turned his radio on. It annoyed her at first that he had not asked, but then she reminded herself that he probably spent the whole day in his car. She wasn’t talking; he was probably both lonely and bored. Let him have his Oingo Boingo.
He changed lanes to get into the faster flow of traffic and the motion of it made her feel a trifle ill. This heat had produced all kinds of new feelings. She ignored it, drinking the last swallow of the Gatorade.
She looked around for a polite place to deposit the bottle. The motion of her head made her dizziness worse and she tried to blink it away. “Do you have a spot for trash?” she asked him. As the words slid out of her mouth, she realized she was slurring like she was very, very drunk. She was horrified to realize she was drooling, too.
Eli tried to get a hold of herself. She pushed with her palms and worked to sit up straight but found that she could not. Her head felt far too heavy for the wet noodle of her neck to have ever supported. Her abs were slack and her spine was a worm. She sagged against the seat; the seatbelt the only thing keeping her from sliding to the floor.
“Whass going on?” The words seemed to take a long time to reach her ears.
Oh shit, I’m having a stroke. An old classmate of Eli’s had had a freak stroke event a week shy of her thirtieth birthday. Frantically, she tried to recall the diagnostic that the woman had posted on Facebook right after. She couldn’t speak clearly. She couldn’t lift her arms at all. Her hand flopped uselessly in the direction of her phone.
“Ooogoada tachme to ahspital,” she slurred at him in molasses-thick nightmare slowness. “Shumding wruuuuunnnnng.”
“Relax,” he said clearly, his voice less deep than before. “You are fine.”
With her last spasm of strength, Eli pulled at the door handle, intending to tumble out of the car. The child safety lock held her in place.
I’m not fine, she thought with her last clear and lucid moment. As her eyes fell closed like heavy curtains, she finally registered that they were going the wrong way. The steely spike of panic that stabbed at her heart was almost enough to counteract the soporific effect of whatever was wrong with her, but not quite. Fighting, terrified, she slipped out of consciousness.
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To today’s youth Deacon Phillippe could very well be the Calvin Harris of Gen Z, but he also has the good fortune of inheriting leading man looks from his actor parents Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon.
If you’ve ever been to a party in the Hollywood hills, then at some point of the night someone will start playing EDM tracks – and this EP is reminiscent of that in beats and style, making for easy dance music that you can sway to while clutching a White Claw (props if it’s Black Cherry). However, if you happen to listen to this EP at the end of the night, coming down from the dance high and driving down Sunset Boulevard at 2am, then your experience will be completely different.
A careful focus on the lyrics and you begin to notice a theme of loss and heartbreak that give these songs a deeper meaning. California Reaper is moody and dark the whole way through. A Love Song is likens love to extracting a knife out of someone’s heart, while Breaking Away lulls you into thinking it’s gonna be a ballad but then morphs into the most personally intimate track on the EP – and perfectly describes the numbness of going through the motions but being detached from everything when you’ve experienced too much pain that they only way not to fall apart is to break away.
There’s no doubt that Deacon has talent and the capacity to convey emotions through music, so it’s interesting to see the direction his music will go in the future. In the meantime, I think this EP is best experienced while you’re gilded like Cassie in Euphoria, crying into her mirror as dozens of flowers surround you, or dancing your heartbreak away like you’re Robin in the club knowing that you’ll be dancing on your own.
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Verdict: Initially I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy this shade because I’m incredibly pale and in the tube, the lipstick looked dark brown. However, I’m pleasantly surprised by the shade did not appear dark on me when I tried it on. In fact, it gives a very ’90s terracotta/brick feel to it and it actually flatters my skin tone. Now for the formula, it’s lightweight and non-drying, and long-lasting. However, it does leave lipstick traces on glasses when you drink or if you kiss someone. But it doesn’t bleed or smudge otherwise, and since it has a doe foot applicator, it means that the application is precise. For everyday lipstick, this is ace.
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Active Ingredients: Rosehip Oil, Aloe, Coconut Oil, and Hyaluronic Acid.
Verdict: Madelaine Petsch is the queen of selfcare and when I heard that she’d be curating Ipsy’s May glam bag, I knew that I had to nab one for myself. First things first, this clay mask smells phenomenal – and by that I mean, it has a very clean and relaxing scent that prepares you for the indulgent journey you’re about to experience. Having oily skin I love clay masks as they help zap up any extra oil, but what I loved about this clay mask, in particular, is that it leaves your skin feeling hydrated. The directions called for leaving the mask on for ten minutes, however, I was caught watching the finale of Big Little Lies so I kept it on for an hour, and my skin never felt tight or taunt once washed off, but actually very nourished and soft. I recommend this mask if you’re looking for a purifying mask that will help restore radiance and suppleness to your skin.
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Verdict: Let me say first off that I LOVE the actual mascara. It doesn’t flake, it lasts all day and it’s smudge-proof. So for that alone, this mascara is awesome. Now, to talk about the mascara wand. The wand is particular, as it’s not your usual wand, it’s flat on one side and when turned it looks very small. Maybe I still need to get a hang of this wand, but for now the application feels a little awkward, but that’s due to me and I don’t fault the mascara. But if you’re looking for a mascara that lifts and creates volume, this one is a very close competitor to Two Faced Better Than Sex Mascara.
Close-up of my lashes wearing the Fenty Beauty Mascara
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A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door.
A grotesque and thrilling dark fantasy, We Can Never Leave This Place is a harrowing portrait of inherited grief and familial trauma.
GRADE: A-
REVIEW:
I’m still trying to make sense of this fever dream that reads like a horror induced Alice in Wonderland tale. Mara has just lost her father, and she lives with her abusive mother who’s expecting a baby, while an unexpected visitor shows up and wreaks havoc in their lives. We’re frequently told that Mara is an expert storyteller throughout the novella (or liar as her mother likes to chide), so take what happens within the pages of this novella with a grain of salt. What is real and what is fantasy? And ultimately, does it really matter to know the difference? LaRocca weaves a dreadful tale soaked in trauma and grief that is easily gulped in one sitting, but that leaves the reader feeling a bit disorientated. If you’re a fan of Kafka, I think you might enjoy this horror novella very much.
*Thank you so much to Nightworms & the author for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
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Adopted Frankie struggles to see eye-to-eye with her mother—who would rather ignore a problem and preserve their “perfect” life than stand up for what’s right. Jo just wants her mom to accept her queer identity—and is totally crushed when Frankie, the only person who really gets her, finds herself infatuated with someone new. Phoenix tries to find his place at the new school and balance wanting to spend time with Frankie but knowing he also has to help out with his sick sister at home. Bella wants to enjoy the end of high school and just head off to college without a hitch. Everyone expects Frankie’s brother Nick to be the golden boy, but even though he just got into his dream school, he’s not even sure he’s a good person. Each of their stories intersects when Bella is sexually assaulted at a party, and it looks like the perpetrator might get away with it.
Moving, heartfelt, and raw, Jagged Little Pill: The Novel draws on the musical’s story and gives readers deeper glimpses of the characters. It’s a story about the power of voicing your pain, standing up for what’s right, and finding healing and connection.
GRADE: B
REVIEW:
If you grew up in the 90’s then you can’t help but have listened to Alanis Morrissette’s breakthrough album Jagged Little Pill. It recently became a musical too, and now there’s a book based on the musical. I wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to a book based off of a musical written around a 90’s album. Let’s just say that the story takes place in contemporary times and NOT the 90’s and it’s very woke riding high on the #METOO movement.
I enjoyed the various POV’s in the novel, as it gave a better sense of what happened when Bella, gets raped during a party. The book focuses on the downfall of trying to keep up appearances and how that often leads one to bury secrets about themselves that should’ve been dealt with instead.
As much as I enjoyed the overall story, I was also expecting a little bit more. I can’t quite explain. I liked the characters but they kinda felt forced at times.
I recommend this novel if you’re a fan of the musical or just want to check out what a novel based on such an iconic album could be like.
*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Amulet Books for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
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The Inkblotters 