Becoming the star is easier when the rest of your band is dead…
All drummer Vienna Taylor ever wanted was to make music. If that came with fame, she’d take it—as long as her best friend, guitarist Madison Pierce, was sharing the spotlight and singing lead. And with their new all-female pop rock band gaining traction, soon everyone would hear their songs…
Except, on the way to an event, the Bittersweet’s van careened off an icy mountain road during a blizzard—leaving one member dead and another severely injured.
In order to survive the frigid night, the rest took shelter in a nearby abandoned cabin. But Vienna’s dreams devolved into a terrifying nightmare as, one by one, her fellow band members met a gruesome end…and Madison simply vanished in the night.
What really happened to the Bittersweet? Did Vienna’s closest friend finally decide to take center stage on her own terms?
She doesn’t want to believe it.
But guilty people run.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
Be happy you weren’t there. Be happy you’re only reading about it.
PLOT SUMMARY:
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
GRADE: A
REVIEW:
All hail the slasher king. Stephen Graham Jones is to horror books as Wes Craven was to horror movies. Meaning that he absolutely knows the genre and all the tropes of said genre. I love that the book was written in a confessional sort of way, with Tolly, the protagonist, trying to have us understand what happened that summer of 1989. With book is steeped in nostalgia and feelings – but at the same time is hella hilarious. I love that Jones is a huge fan of slashers and that he knows how to deliver unhinged violence, but at the same time truly tug at our hearts.
This book is filled with all the fun of a horror film, but also all the feelings of a coming-of-age novel. I loved Tolly’s friendship with Amber because the friendships of your youth are never quite the same as an adult. Childhood friendships are so intense, and truly ride and die – and I loved how that was presented and explored.
I don’t want to discuss too much about the plot because I think it’s best to jump into this blindly but rest assured, if you loved SGJ’s The Indian Lake trilogy series, you will absolutely love this novel too. This is top-tier horror at its finest and if you’re new to SGJ it’s a good book to start!
*Thank you so much to Saga Press for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos’ life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos’ backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.
Soon, Roos is whisked away to the crumbling estate Agnes inherited upon the death of her husband, where an ill woman haunts the halls, strange smells drift through the air at night, and mysterious stone statues reside in the family chapel. Something dreadful festers in the manor, but still, the attraction between Roos and Agnes is undeniable.
Then, someone is murdered.
Poor, alone, and with a history of ‘hysterics’, Roos is the obvious culprit. With her sanity and innocence in question, she’ll have to prove who—or what—is at fault or lose everything she holds dear.
GRADE: B+
REVIEW:
The first few chapters completely reeled me in this intriguing and particular story about Roos a girl who holds seances with her mother for money. But when a widow Agnes Knoop comes in for a séance but decides to buy Roos company instead, is when we enter the gothic novel era. All the while, in the present time, we the readers know that something has happened because Roos is being held responsible for the murder and a psychiatrist is trying to figure out exactly what happened.
As much as the writing is lush and descriptive, the pacing kind of lags – but I find myself much more interested in the story when we’re in the present time. Perhaps because the writing is mostly dialogue in those cases and the pacing is swift during those scenes. The mystery is intriguing, and I love the sapphic romance in this – and the two main characters, Roos and Agnes, are very interesting and unique.
I recommend this book if you’re into Gothic literature, love ghost stories, and want a mystery worth reading.
*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
“Can you hear me?” A male face peers into mine. Midthirties, glasses, expressive eyebrows. Andy. Kind.
“Yes,” I say. There’s an overwhelming barrage of hot sensation, then click, it all evens out—light, sound, the air on my skin—settling like embers, then cooling.
I breathe in, feel my chest balloon, breathe out. Lift my hands to face level and flex my fingers, mapping how the smooth pale skin with its smattering of freckles shifts and ripples over my knuckle ridges.
I’m sitting. Dressed in what seems to be an evening gown. I register how tight the skirt is around my thighs. How beautifully the blue sequins catch in the ice-white light from above. Palms down, I skim the fabric, tickling the pads of my fingers as the sequins catch, lift, fall. It’s like wearing a party. I like it.
“Do you know who you are?” says Andy.
I look up and feel myself smile. He’s in baggy jeans, a gray T-shirt with a buffalo plaid shirt open over top and a pen hooked on the breast pocket. A dark five-o’clock shadow travels down his neck. His look screams sleepless nights.
“Of course,” I say. Everything is simply there, no effort, natural as breathing. “I’m Julia Walden.”
“Do you know where you are? What year it is?”
“We’re in LA. It’s January 2022 and Biden is President.” I tilt my head. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic.”
“Do you know what’s about to happen?”
I register, out of the corner of my eye, a boom mic operator to our deep left, but keep my attention on Andy.
“I’m about to compete on The Proposal.”
“God,” breathes Andy, putting a fist to his chest like my answers are slaying him. “You—you’re—” He crooks a finger at his lips.
“Here?” I suggest with a light laugh. Now I’m rubbing my arms, the rough skin at my elbows, allowing my hands to touch my own face, then wander up to my hair, long and loose. I fish it around my shoulder. It’s a fiery, sun-gleam red. I love it. I love everything about being Julia Walden.
“Real,” says Andy when he’s recovered his speech. “Working. Amazing. I kind of want to hug you?”
“You don’t have to ask.” I stand in my high heels, taller than Andy by nearly a head. His glasses collide with my shoulder as applause bursts around us. After a second, he hooks my hands in his and pulls back, eyes moist.
“Wow, Julia. Just wow.”
I scan our surroundings as flashes pop. We’re in a warehouse. To the right, large machines quietly rest. I note hydraulics, robotic arms, big sheets of pale, rubbery material. Skin, I realize, and my own skin seems to respond, tiny goose bumps racing up my arms.
It’s not a bad feeling, exactly. Just…unpleasant, like touching something wet that you thought would be dry.
To my left, a film crew makes a crescent shape. One hefty man shoulders an equally hefty camera, trained on me. I know without being told they’re here from The Proposal.
It’s a little strange to be having this intimate moment with Andy while everyone watches. Then again…that’s about to be my life. Fully on camera.
Andy claps his hands. “So. Ready to meet Josh?”
“I was born ready,” I say with a laugh. My eyes flicker up to the answering sound of laughter from the film crew. But while I did mean to be funny, I also mean it.
Andy pulls out a cell phone. “This is yours. Let’s break it in.” He leans into me and we smile for our first selfie.
“Should we post it to Insta?” he says. “Your handle just went live—we had to wait until the other contestants’ phones were taken away. Oh, and we can’t mention you’re on The Proposal yet—” But I reach for the phone.
“I got it.” My fingers navigate the screen easily. Also, wow— how does @TheRealJuliaWalden already have close to a million followers…and counting? I caption the picture the journey be-gins!!!, noting the tug of resistance within me as I put the phone down. I guess part of me wanted to watch the reactions roll in. Immediately I wall up this thought. I’m not here for everyone. Just one man.
Andy has pulled out a blue pen while I’ve been messing with the phone, and is nervously gnawing on the clicker end. Weirdly, I want to reassure him, It’ll be okay. You’ll see.
“Julia!” the producer calls out. “Could you introduce your-self? For our viewers?”
I look at the camera’s cold eye across the distance and imagine that I’m looking into the face of a friend who can’t wait to see me. I smile.
“Sure! I’m a Synth. My name is Julia. And I’m here to find love.”
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
Nothing matters, the sky is burning, love isn’t real.
PLOT SUMMARY:
The American dream is dead, and Los Angeles is burning. Hopeless and anesthetized, four lost souls contend with the darkest elements of the human experience in a desperate attempt to quench their thirst for meaning and connection in a world without a future. For Arden Coover, a spun-out acid junkie with the ink still drying on a useless philosophy degree from Berkeley, it’s in the potential salvation offered by a new relationship rife with promise but fraught with uncertainty. His fresh-out-of-high-school sister, Tess, is struggling to accept that her best option in life may lie in a convenient but loveless marriage to a rich, narcissistic novelist. Ryland Richter, an alcoholic insurance executive with too much money and too few scruples, seeks toxic solace in the arms of a dangerously unhinged subordinate. And Baxter Kent, a stoned surfer who’s addicted to AI pornography and afraid of women, tries to make things work with a prototypal sex robot that’s incapable of even the most rudimentary forms of communication.
GRADE: A
REVIEW:
If you like ensemble multiple POV books where characters eventually come in contact ala Bret Easton Ellis Rules of Attraction, then you will enjoy this book that takes the reader on a dark journey in a Los Angeles that’s burning. The characters reek with cynicism, but deep down they’re all searching to feel something – but they’ve become so desithetized that they’re unable to feel anything at all. Each character is trying to figure out a meaning for their life, whether it’s Arden who has just graduated from college and finds himself aimless, Tess who dates a famous author but feels as though people only like her for her beauty, Ryland who’s obsessed with his job and gets involved with an unhinged young woman, and Baxter who would like to have a relationship but porn addiction has made him unable to enjoy the company or sex of real women, and gets involved with a sex robot. Throughout this twisty, dark journey, each character witnesses a strange man following them, while the city burns around them. What does it mean? Are they all doomed? Those are the questions you’ll be asking yourself when reading this novel, and also realizing that many of these characters feel familiar because you either know someone like them, or you’ve been that person before (or still are) – which then brings you to wonder if you’re on the brink of self-destruction as these beautiful but tragic characters.
No answers are really offered, and maybe, like a burning Los Angeles, that’s crumbling like your dreams, you realize that life offers very few answers, and then you die.
Readers who enjoy self-absorbed, inherently flawed, and broken characters living luxurious lives, then this is for you – and if you like dark novels that only get darker and darker pushing you to the absolute abyss.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
From New York Times bestselling author Randy Wayne White, after the deadliest hurricane to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in a century, Doc Ford must stop a gang of thieves—and worse—during the twelve hours of chaos that follow the passing of a storm’s eye.
A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc is tagging great white sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don’t think it’s a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin’s Bay Marina on the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed, prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane.
No one, however, is prepared for a cataclysmic event that will forever change the island and leaves Doc to deal with escapees from Russia’s most dangerous prison, including a serial killer—the Vulture Monk—who has a taste for blood. His only ally is an enigmatic British inventor whose decision to ride out the storm might have more to do with revenge than protecting a priceless art collection.
Doc has a lot at stake—the lives of his fiancée, Hannah Smith, and their son, plus the fate of his hipster pal, Tomlinson, whose sailboat has disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest threat of all, though, is a force that cannot be escaped—a Category Five hurricane that, minute by minute, melds sins of the past with Florida’s precarious future.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
An engrossing and atmospheric debut that follows young Weatherly Wilder as she uses her unique gift to solve her cousin’s mysterious murder and prove her own innocence, set in the beautiful wilds of Appalachia and imbued with magic realism.
In a small town in rural Georgia, Appalachian roots and traditions still run deep. Folks paint their houses blue to keep the spirits way. Black ferns grow, it’s said, where death will follow. And Weatherly Wilder’s grandmother is a local Granny Witch, relied on for help delivering babies, making herbal remedies, tending to the sick—and sometimes serving up a fatal dose of revenge when she deems it worthy. Hyper-religious, she rules Weatherly with an iron fist; because Weatherly has a rare and covetable gift: she’s a Death Talker. Weatherly, when called upon, can talk the death out of the dying; only once, never twice. But in her short twenty years on this Earth this gift has taken a toll, rooting her to the small town that only wants her around when they need her and resents her backwater ways when they don’t—and how could she ever leave, if it meant someone could die while she was gone?
Weatherly’s best friend and cousin, Adaire, also has a gift: she’s a Scryer; she can see the future reflected back in a dark surface, usually her scrying pan. Right before she’s hit and in a bicycle accident, Adaire saw something unnerving in the pan, that much Weatherly knows, and she is certain this is why the mayor killed her cousin—she doesn’t believe for a moment that it was an accident. But when the mayor’s son lays dying and Weatherly, for the first time, is unable to talk the death of him, the whole town suspects she was out for revenge, that she wouldn’t save him. Weatherly, with the help of Adaire’s spirit, sets out to prove her own innocence and find Adaire’s killer, no matter what it takes.
Author Bio:
Dana Elmendorf was born and raised in small town in Tennessee. She now lives in Southern California with her husband, two boys and two dogs. When she isn’t exercising, she can be found geeking out with Mother Nature. After four years of college and an assortment of jobs, she wrote a contemporarty YA novel. This is her adult debut.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.
—Oscar Wilde
At Nice’s Côte d’Azur Airport, the pretty woman coming down the jetway looked like every other bleary-eyed traveler. Rumpled T-shirt over jeans with an indeterminate stain on the right thigh, hair shoved into a messy ponytail mussed from the headrest. A backpack was slung over her right shoulder, weighed down with items that weren’t technically hers but looked like they could be. She’d sorted through them on the seven-hour flight, just long enough to make the contents feel familiar.
“Don’t lose it,” the Turkish man said when he hung it on her arm, and she hadn’t.
The jetway dumped her into the terminal, and she trailed behind a family of five, past gates stretched out like spider legs, along the wall of windows offering a blinding view of the sparkling Mediterranean, a turquoise so bright it burned her eyes. The backpack bounced against her shoulder bone, and her heart gave a quiet, little jingle.
She made it through passport control without issue, thanks to her careful selection of the agent behind the glass. A man, first and foremost. Not too old or too young, not too handsome. A five to her solid eight—or so she’d been told by more than one man. This one must have agreed because he stamped her passport with an appreciative nod. French men were like that. One smile from a woman out of their league, and they melted like a cream-filled bonbon.
She thanked him and slid her passport into her pocket.
In it were stamps to every country in Europe and the Americas, from her crisscrosses over every continent including Antarctica, from her detours to bask on the famous beaches of Asia, Australia, the South Seas. More than once, she’d had to renew the booklet long before it expired because she’d run out of empty spots for customs agents to stamp. She was particularly proud of that, and of how she could look any way you wanted her to look, be anyone you needed her to be. Today she was playing the role of American Tourist On A Budget.
At baggage claim, she slid the backpack down an aching shoulder and checked the time on her cell. Just under six hours for this little errand, plenty of time assuming she didn’t hit any unexpected roadblocks. If she didn’t get held up at customs, if the taxi line wasn’t too long, if traffic on the A8 wasn’t too awful, which it would be because getting in and out of Monte Carlo was always a nightmare at this time of year. If if if. If she missed the flight to London, she was screwed.
A buzzer sounded, and the baggage carousel rumbled to a slow spin.
At least she didn’t look any more miserable than the people milling around her, their faces long with jet lag. She caught snippets of conversation in foreign tongues, German, Italian, Arabic, French, and she didn’t need a translator to know they were bitching about the wait. The French were never in a hurry, and they were always striking about something. She wondered what it could be this time.
Thirty-eight eternal minutes later, the carousel spit out her suitcase. She hauled it from the band with a grunt, plopped the heavy backpack on top and followed the stream of tourists to the exit.
Walk with purpose. Look the customs agent in the eye. Smile, the fleeting kind with your lips closed, not too big or too cocky. Act breezy like you’ve got nothing to prove or to hide. By now she knew all the tricks.
The customs agent she was paired with was much too young for her liking, his limbs still lanky with the leftovers of puberty, which meant he had something to prove to the cluster of more senior agents lingering behind him. She ignored their watchful gazes, taking in his shiny forehead, the way it was dotted with pimples, and dammit, he was going to be a problem.
He held up a hand, the universal sign for halt. “Avez-vous quelque chose à déclarer?”
Her fingers curled around the suitcase handle, clamping down. She gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, but I don’t speak French.”
That part was the truth, at least. She didn’t speak it, at least not well and not unless she absolutely had to. And her rudimentary French wasn’t necessary just yet.
But she understood him well enough, and she definitely knew that last word. He was asking if she had something to declare.
The agent gestured to her suitcase. “Please, may I take a look in your luggage?” His English was heavy with accent, his lips slick with spit, but at least he was polite about it.
She gave a pointed look at the exit a few feet away. On the other side of the motion-activated doors, a line of people leaned against a glass-and-steel railing, fists full of balloons and colorful bouquets. With her free hand, she wriggled her fingers in a wave, even though she didn’t know a single one of them.
She looked back at the agent with another smile. “Is that really necessary? My flight was delayed, and I’m kind of in a hurry. My friends out there have been waiting for hours.”
Calm. Reasonable. Not breaking the slightest sweat.
The skin of his forehead creased in a frown. “This means you have nothing to declare?”
“Only that a saleslady lied to my face about a dress I bought being wrinkle resistant.”
She laughed, but the agent’s face remained as stony as ever.
He beckoned her toward an area behind him, a short hallway lined with metal tables. “S’il vous plait. The second table.”
Still, she didn’t move. The doors slid open, and she flung another glance at the people lined up outside. So close yet so far.
As if he could read her mind, the agent took a calculated step to his left, standing between her and the exit. He swept an insistent arm through the air, giving her little choice. The cluster of agents were paying more attention now.
She huffed a sigh. Straightened her shoulders and gave her bag a hard tug. “Okay, but fair warning. I’m on the tail end of a three-week vacation here, which means everything in my suitcase is basically a giant pile of dirty laundry.”
Again, the truth. Miami to Atlanta to LA to Tokyo to Dubai to Nice, a blur of endless hours with crummy movies and soggy airplane food, of loud, smelly men who drank vodka for breakfast, of kids marching up and down the aisles while everybody else was trying to sleep. What she was wearing was the cleanest thing she had left, and she was still thousands of miles from home.
She let go of the handle, and the suitcase spun and wobbled, whacking the metal leg of the table with a hard clang. Let him lug the heavy thing onto the inspection table himself.
She stood with crossed arms and watched him spread her suitcase open on the table. She wasn’t lying about the laundry or that stupid dress, which currently looked like a crumpled paper bag. He picked through her dirty jeans and rumpled T-shirts, rifled through blouses and skirts. When he got to the wad of dirty underwear, he clapped the suitcase shut.
“See?” she said. “Just a bunch of dirty clothes.”
“And your other bag?”
The backpack dangling from her shoulder, an ugly Tumi knockoff. Her stomach dropped, but she made sure to hold his gaze.
“Nothing in here, either. No meat, no cheese, no forgotten fruit. I promise.”
She’d done that once, let an old apple sink to the bottom of her bag for a hyped-up beagle to sniff out, and she paid for it with a forty-five minute wait at a scorching Chilean airport. It was a mistake she wouldn’t make again.
“Madame, please. Do not make me ask you again.”
The little shit really said it. He really called her madame. This kid who was barely out of high school was making her feel old and decrepit, while in the same breath speaking to her like she was a child. His words were as infuriating as they were alarming. She hooked a thumb under the backpack’s strap, but she didn’t let it go.
And yet what choice did she have? She couldn’t run, not with those senior agents watching. Not with this pubescent kid and his long, grasshopper limbs. He’d catch her in a hot second.
She told herself there was nothing to find. That’s what the Turkish man had promised her with a wink and a smile, that nobody would ever know. He swore she’d cruise right on through customs. And she had, many, many times.
As she slid the backpack from her arm with another dramatic sigh, she hoped like hell he wasn’t lying. “Please hurry.”
The agent took the bag from her fingers and emptied it out on the table. He took out the paperback and crinkled magazines, the half-eaten bag of nuts with the Japanese label, the wallet and the zippered pouch stuffed with well-used cosmetics that had never once touched her face. He lined the items up, one after the other, until the contents formed a long, neat row on the shiny metal surface. The backpack hung in his hand, deflated and empty.
She lifted a brow: See?
But then he did something she wasn’t expecting. He turned the backpack upside down, just…upended the thing in the air. Crumbs rained onto the table. A faded receipt fluttered to the ground.
And there it was, a dull but discernible scraping sound, a sudden weight tugging at the muscles in his arm, like something inside the backpack shifted.
But nothing else fell out. There were no internal pockets.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” With a clanging heart, she pointed to the stuff on the table. “Can I put that back now? I really have to go.”
The agent stared at her through a long, weighted silence, like a held breath.
Hers.
He slapped the backpack to the table, and she cringed when he shoved a hand in deep, all the way up to his elbow. He felt around the sides and the bottom, sweeping his fingers around the cheap polyester lining. She saw when he made contact with the source of the noise by the way his face changed.
The muscles in her stomach tightened. “Excuse me, this is ridiculous. Give it back.”
The agent didn’t let go of the backpack. He reached in his other hand, and now there was another terrifying sound—of fabric, being ripped apart at the seams.
“Hey,” she said, lunging for the backpack.
He twisted, blocking her with his body.
A few breathless seconds later he pulled it out, a small, flat object that had been sewn into the backpack lining. Small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. Almost like he’d been looking for it.
“What is this?” he said, holding it in the air between them.
“That’s a book.” It was the only thing she could think of to say, and it wasn’t just any book. It was a gold-illuminated manuscript by a revered fourteenth-century Persian poet, one of the earliest copies from the estate of an Islamic art collector who died in Germany last year. Like most of the items in his collection, this one did not technically belong to him.
“I can see it’s a book. Where did you get it?”
Her face went hot, and she had to steady herself on the metal table—the same one he was settling the book gently on top of. He turned the gold-leafed paper with careful fingers, and her mind whirled. Should she plead jet lag? Cry or pretend to faint?
“I’ve never seen it before in my life.”
This, finally, was the truth. Today was the first time she’d seen the book with her own eyes.
The agent looked up from the Arabic symbols on the page, and she didn’t miss the gotcha gleam in his eyes. The way his shiny forehead had gone even shinier now, a million new pinpricks of satisfied sweat. His gaze flitted over her shoulder, and she understood the gesture perfectly.
He was summoning backup.
She was wondering about French prison conditions.
His smile was like ice water on her skin. “Madame, I must insist you come with me.”
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.
In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.
For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.
SLEEP ALONE by J.A.W. MCCARTHY
For the past six years, Ronnie has worked selling merch for a perpetually touring band. Late nights, sweaty clubs, dingy motel rooms, endless roads-as rough as it’s been, there is no other way of life for this band of hungry succubi leaving bodies in their wake.
Until she meets the enigmatic Helene.
Helene is just as restless, just as lonely, and just as full of secrets. With Helene in tow, Ronnie and the band make their way across the Pacific Northwest, trying to outrun not only their mistakes, but the mysterious disease stalking the band, a disease that devours succubi from the inside out.
The hunger is as endless as the road, but maybe Ronnie doesn’t always want to sleep alone.
THE VEGETARIAN by HAN KANG
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
A recent widow’s plan to spend the summer in Cape Cod hiding from her interfering family is upended when she discovers her beach house has an unexpected guest, and the secret she’s been keeping about her marriage threatens to be exposed. Perfect beach reading for fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid and Emily Henry.
70 year old widow Cecilia Lapthorne can’t bear the prospect of a family party to celebrate her birthday and the memory of her husband, famous artist Cameron Lapthorne. They had a toxic marriage but stayed together for the children, and bound by a big secret. She runs away to the Cape Cod seashore cottage she owned with Cameron–it’s where they first fell in love–but she hasn’t returned since she discovered him cheating on her there (for the first time). No one in her family knows about it, so she will be perfectly, delightfully alone for the summer.
Except struggling artist Lily has been secretly crashing on the sofa of the seashore cottage for the last couple of weeks. Unable to make rent after dropping out of medical school to pursue her dreams of becoming an artist and working as a housekeeper in Cecilia’s Cape Cod enclave, she’s been illicitly camping at the cottage. Which isn’t a problem as it’s been unoccupied for years…until Cecilia unexpectedly shows up.
After the drama of discovering she has an unexpected house-guest has faded, Cecilia decides she’ll get along just fine with Lily for the summer. They form a tentative and powerful bond, based on shared love of art, but also the vulnerabilities they both share with each other. And when Todd, Cecilia’s beloved grandson (and the man who broke Lily’s heart in college) tracks her to the cottage, the three of them settle in for a summer of self-discovery, self-belief and second chances.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
The Inkblotters 