Hey all, welcome back to the book bit! I know, I know, I say this every month, but October really just flew by. I feel like I have whiplash. I struggled through my reading in September. So, when October came around I was almost in a reading slump, but October is my favorite reading month! I read only horror books in October! So, despite my near reading slump I loaded up and was really excited. But life really got in the way! We were so busy all month! I can't even tell you what all we did, but every weekend was booked, I had a lot of work I was doing, and of course, we had Halloween. It was just a crazy month. But enough about that, let's talk about the books I read!
"Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
Five thriller seeker friends decide to have a wedding in a supposedly haunted mansion in Japan. Sure, it's been a little while since they've all gotten together, but this is sure to bring the group back together. Looking for spooky things together, just like old times. But just the first step in the house has the group on edge. And the bride that died there all those years ago, who still roams the halls, is looking for her next sacrifice. Can these five friends make it out together? Or will the house keep them forever?
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But, it didn't work for me. It was extremely short (which is completely fine) but it wasn't written concisely enough for a short work. The author spent so much time detailing things that didn't seem important to the plot or the characters that slowed the pace to a crawl. Have you ever heard of purple prose? This book is loaded to the brim with it. Which is unfortunate. Overall, I think the Japanese folklore part of it was really interesting and had a lot of potential, but Khaw just didn't deliver.
"The Deep" by Nick Cutter
People are starting to forget. Little things at first; their car keys, their birthday. But in a short amount of time it turns worse. People forget how to walk, how to breathe; their brains forget to tell their hearts to beat. With the planet dying in droves, Lucas gets a call saying his brother needs his help. His brother he hasn't seen in nearly twenty years. When he finds out his brother is in the deepest part of the Marianas Trench in an underwater laboratory studying a mysterious potentially cure-all substance, he wonders why he needs him. When Lucas arrives and starts to understand what they're dealing with, he's determined to help his brother any way he can. Even if it means going eight miles under the sea to a lab that's lost communication with the surface.
So, right off, Nick Cutter is a highly recognized gore writer. If you cannot handle gore writing, skip this book, because it gets nasty. For me, good gore writing should make me sick to my stomach. And this was very good gore writing. I couldn't eat while reading this; I didn't want to risk it! The atmosphere that Cutter was able to get with this book was incredible to me. You could feel the claustrophobia and weight of the ocean, the darkness of being that far underwater. Now, I did have some pacing issues in the middle and the end because the story kept veering off every now and then to tell other character side stories. But other than that, this book really delivered for me. I would definitely categorize this as a psychological horror with a heavy dose of gore. I ran through every emotion reading this book and the ending completely blew me away. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that! Check this one out if you have the stomach.
"The Family Plot" by Cherie Priest
Dahlia's father runs a salvage company that isn't doing too hot. And when an old and well off woman offers to sell the house and adjacent building items before it's demolished, he can't say no. Because this house is full of pickings for the right buyer. Who cares if they're in the red right now, this haul could put them back in the black! So Dahlia heads up to the property with a small group of workers to start salvaging. Right away, Dahlia senses something in the house, like it can feel her. And when members of the crew, and herself, start seeing things that aren't there, everyone's first conclusion is it's haunted. Well, Dahlia's worked in haunted places before, all old houses have a few ghosts. But Dahlia may have met her match with this house. It's angry and willing to do whatever it takes to keep her there.
On paper, this sounds like a true and proper haunted house book. I had a really hard time connecting to the characters and the story itself. Priest spent a long time detailing what was in the house, the carriage house, the barn, all the antiques they found and the plans they had to take everything apart. Too much time was spent there instead of the happenings inside the house. This book also had a fairly large cast. We had Dahlia and her crew (four in total) plus the cast of spirits in the house (at least four) and a bank of side characters that made regular appearances. It was a lot of people to keep up with and Priest just didn't put in the work to have that big of a cast. Now, the ghost story? The haunting parts of it? Well done! But there wasn't enough of it. And by the end of the book I had way too many questions. I don't like having questions at the end of the book, plot holes and loose ends are the bane of my existence. Overall, this was not a bad book by any means, but it could have been so much better! The potential was all there!
"The Dead and the Dark" by Courtney Gould
Logan just wants to land. For as long as she can remember, nowhere has been home. Her dads have always been busy with their paranormal TV show that causes them to constantly move across the country. While the nomadic lifestyle was fun for a little while, Logan's done moving around pretending to be happy. But when her dad, Alejo, tells her they have to go to a small town in Oregon to meet her other dad for work, Logan is counting down the days to her eighteenth birthday when she can be on her own. Snakebite's had a few missing teens, and when Logan and Alejo get to town, the crowd is less than friendly and Logan has a feeling it'll be difficult fitting in. And when more teens start missing after their arrival, Logan wonders if they'll make it out alive. There's something dark in Snakebite. Something that everyone thought was buried, but apparently, not deep enough.
This book really blew me away. I didn't really know how the setup was going to go, but Gould really put together something creepy here. There's a lot of great poc/bipoc rep and lgbtq+ rep in this book. The spook factor was really high and the tension was amazing! I will tell you, if you have trouble reading books with homophobia and slurs, skip this. When I tell you Snakebite is a very backwards town and Gould wrote it with accuracy, please believe me. There was a really dark undercurrent to this book that was really well done and Gould did an excellent job keeping me guessing. The ending blew me away. There were definitely times of frustration that I struggled with, but other than that I thought this book was an excellent spooky season read, especially if you like paranormal books.
That's all the reading I did in October! Like I said, we had a very busy month and I don't see us slowing done for the holidays. I think we're going to be just as busy until Christmas is over. I'm probably going to lighten my reading load for the rest of the year, but don't worry I'll still post all my book reviews right here. I hope you all had a safe and spooky Halloween! We'll talk soon, book nerds. Happy reading!
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