Book reviews: Catch-up edition
Sep. 22nd, 2022 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkJust Like Home by Sarah Gailey
Genre: Adult, horror, speculative
DNF for now about 36%. I might make another attempt when my library hold on the ebook comes in, but I struggled with the audiobook due to the narrator's monotonous voice, the inability to skip forward, and the issues I'll describe below.
I've been dying to read more haunted house books ever since I enjoyed Dead Silence by SA Barnes (which was kind of like a haunted house in space story), but this...was not it.
The issue is probably that Sarah Gailey is not a writer I click with. The only other book of theirs I've tried to read was Magic For Liars, which I also DNF'ed after a whopping three attempts to read that book.
I just found this book incredibly boring. Vera, the protagonist, has no personality outside of the fact that she loved her serial killer father and wishes her emotionally abusive/neglectful mother would love her back. I couldn't tell you anything about her character outside of those two facts. The relationship between a child and an abusive parent should be emotionally fraught, and while I hesitate to say the depiction of Vera's relationship with her mother was inaccurate—because I don't want to say things are "inaccurate" simply because they don't align with my own experiences—the relationship gave me nothing. Vera was passive in the relationship and kept unconditionally loving her mother despite knowing her mother didn't love her in return.
I'm interested in haunted house books, but the "child of a serial killer" trope is one of my least favorite thriller tropes, and so I frankly just did not care about all the ruminating Vera did on her relationship with her father. This is an issue I also had with Magic For Liars—I find Gailey is just too repetitive in how they depict their protagonists, who seem constructed around one single thought pattern that is repeated in their internal narration ad nauseum.
Also, basically nothing happened in the first third of the book besides Vera finding a few odd messages in the house, and I found the flashbacks completely unnecessary. (Side note: Why am I, as a writer, always slammed for using flashbacks when there are plenty of books that not only use flashbacks, but also use them quite poorly?)
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
Genre: Adult, thriller
I hated the first book I read by Lucy Foley (The Guest List), so this book was...better, in comparison. But Foley is probably also an author I just don't gel with. I'm not prudish in my reading habits, but her thrillers always revolve so much around sex that I get very turned off.
Things We Do In the Dark by Jennifer Hillier
Genre: Adult, thriller
I won this book in an audiobook giveaway, after I noticed this book seemed to be getting quite a lot of buzz. But my feelings about it are...meh. Maybe 2.5 out of 5 stars if I had to go with a rating.
This was less of a conventional thriller and more a story about how much trauma the protagonist went through as a child. There were a few good twists, although the major one was fairly obvious—and I would actually argue that not knowing the first twist made Part 2 of the book very hard to get through. My favorite parts of the book were the parts that dealt with Jimmy Peralta's death and also the way the book valued Paris and Jimmy's platonic relationship, which is something you rarely see in fiction.
But honestly, I did not enjoy the extensive flashbacks and the fact that half of the book felt like a character biography.
The Marvellers by Dhonielle Clayton
Genre: Middle grade, fantasy
I really wish I loved this book more than I did!
Don't get me wrong, I still rated it 4 out of 5 stars. And I could definitely see this being the equivalent of Harry Potter for the current generation of young teens. The world was magical and lushly described.
But the thing that I struggled with was the prejudice Ella constantly faced as a Conjuror. It was so unrelenting and pervasive that it sucked the lightheartedness and escapism out of the story for me and made me feel a little depressed as I was reading the book.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Genre: Adult, horror
This was a fine, but not what I was personally looking for. I wanted a haunted house book, but this isn't really that. However, if you've ever wanted a retelling of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe, or if you're looking for books that have a certain [spoiler redacted] element similar to Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, this might be up your alley.
*
Next on my TBR are The Sleepless by Victor Manibo, Aces Wild by Amanda DeWitt, The Depths by Nicole Lesperance, and hopefully my hold on the audiobook for Babel by RF Kuang comes in soon.
I am still on a quest for a good haunted house book, and it looks like I'll have to wait until next year. But there are quite a few coming out next year that I'm excited for:
Genre: Adult, horror, speculative
DNF for now about 36%. I might make another attempt when my library hold on the ebook comes in, but I struggled with the audiobook due to the narrator's monotonous voice, the inability to skip forward, and the issues I'll describe below.
I've been dying to read more haunted house books ever since I enjoyed Dead Silence by SA Barnes (which was kind of like a haunted house in space story), but this...was not it.
The issue is probably that Sarah Gailey is not a writer I click with. The only other book of theirs I've tried to read was Magic For Liars, which I also DNF'ed after a whopping three attempts to read that book.
I just found this book incredibly boring. Vera, the protagonist, has no personality outside of the fact that she loved her serial killer father and wishes her emotionally abusive/neglectful mother would love her back. I couldn't tell you anything about her character outside of those two facts. The relationship between a child and an abusive parent should be emotionally fraught, and while I hesitate to say the depiction of Vera's relationship with her mother was inaccurate—because I don't want to say things are "inaccurate" simply because they don't align with my own experiences—the relationship gave me nothing. Vera was passive in the relationship and kept unconditionally loving her mother despite knowing her mother didn't love her in return.
I'm interested in haunted house books, but the "child of a serial killer" trope is one of my least favorite thriller tropes, and so I frankly just did not care about all the ruminating Vera did on her relationship with her father. This is an issue I also had with Magic For Liars—I find Gailey is just too repetitive in how they depict their protagonists, who seem constructed around one single thought pattern that is repeated in their internal narration ad nauseum.
Also, basically nothing happened in the first third of the book besides Vera finding a few odd messages in the house, and I found the flashbacks completely unnecessary. (Side note: Why am I, as a writer, always slammed for using flashbacks when there are plenty of books that not only use flashbacks, but also use them quite poorly?)
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
Genre: Adult, thriller
I hated the first book I read by Lucy Foley (The Guest List), so this book was...better, in comparison. But Foley is probably also an author I just don't gel with. I'm not prudish in my reading habits, but her thrillers always revolve so much around sex that I get very turned off.
Things We Do In the Dark by Jennifer Hillier
Genre: Adult, thriller
I won this book in an audiobook giveaway, after I noticed this book seemed to be getting quite a lot of buzz. But my feelings about it are...meh. Maybe 2.5 out of 5 stars if I had to go with a rating.
This was less of a conventional thriller and more a story about how much trauma the protagonist went through as a child. There were a few good twists, although the major one was fairly obvious—and I would actually argue that not knowing the first twist made Part 2 of the book very hard to get through. My favorite parts of the book were the parts that dealt with Jimmy Peralta's death and also the way the book valued Paris and Jimmy's platonic relationship, which is something you rarely see in fiction.
But honestly, I did not enjoy the extensive flashbacks and the fact that half of the book felt like a character biography.
The Marvellers by Dhonielle Clayton
Genre: Middle grade, fantasy
I really wish I loved this book more than I did!
Don't get me wrong, I still rated it 4 out of 5 stars. And I could definitely see this being the equivalent of Harry Potter for the current generation of young teens. The world was magical and lushly described.
But the thing that I struggled with was the prejudice Ella constantly faced as a Conjuror. It was so unrelenting and pervasive that it sucked the lightheartedness and escapism out of the story for me and made me feel a little depressed as I was reading the book.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Genre: Adult, horror
This was a fine, but not what I was personally looking for. I wanted a haunted house book, but this isn't really that. However, if you've ever wanted a retelling of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe, or if you're looking for books that have a certain [spoiler redacted] element similar to Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, this might be up your alley.
*
Next on my TBR are The Sleepless by Victor Manibo, Aces Wild by Amanda DeWitt, The Depths by Nicole Lesperance, and hopefully my hold on the audiobook for Babel by RF Kuang comes in soon.
I am still on a quest for a good haunted house book, and it looks like I'll have to wait until next year. But there are quite a few coming out next year that I'm excited for:
- She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran (which has been comped to Mexican Gothic)
- Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury
- How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (I have not had a good time reading Hendrix before, but I'll at least give this a try)
- Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie
- Those We Drown by Amy Goldsmith (a haunted SHIP!)
