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REVIEW: Sundial by Catriona Ward
Sundial, much like its atmospheric veracity, blew me away. I stood in the desolated desert and allowed the dust and the sound of longing carried by the wind to scratch at my skin. I’ve never been one for extremes, especially the heat but this novel made it more claustrophobic, more suffocating, and felt myself clawing for the cool. Sundial had everything that I love in a horror story…oppressing sense of dread. A threat that is entirely human. A will to protect and survive. Horror isn’t exclusively about ghost stories, the supernatural, and things that go bump in the night. Horror examines just how the humanity (or lack thereof) of our…
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Why Do So Many Women Enjoy Reading Domestic Thrillers?
Domestic thrillers have been on my radar for quite some time. My first dip into the genre came when I discovered Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson in 2012. It was the first domestic thriller that impacted me, and the plot has stayed buried in my psyche. I wasn’t new to the thriller genre, having devoured Karen Rose novels and detective stories before that. This felt new, invigorating, and frightening on some deeper primal level. Imagine waking up every morning in an unrecognisable bed, next to an unrecognisable man, and having that man explain that he is Ben, her husband and that she had an accident twenty years…
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Deep Down There by Oli Jacobs
Deep Down There. Nothing good ever comes from big black holes, whether it’s from the horrific type in space or massive sinkholes that wreak their havoc on earth, nothing. good. ever. happens. Order this book right now. I started reading at approximately 1 pm and by 4 pm I had finished, like a marathon runner trying to outdo their personal best, I needed to find out the why, the where, and the how. DO IT! Oli Jacobs can’t write a bad story, like seriously, everything I have read I have loved. He can shut me up with his sharp, witty, and alluring stories of the human condition and terrifying situations,…
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TBR Thursdays: 26th May 2022
Anyone that knows me, knows that I keep adding to my TBR and buying more books that I don’t have time for let alone the shelf space. Call it an affliction but I prefer to call it love… the smell, the look and the pleasure I get from new books is something amazing. So what did I add to my goodreads TBR shelf this week? Lets take a look. Slice of Paradise: A Beach Vacation Horror Anthology An unknown danger lurks beneath the sand at a secluded beach. A couple encounters a deadly creature during their nighttime dive. A father fights to save his daughter from a harrowing nightmare. A…
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REVIEW: The Marsh House by Zoë Somerville
The Marsh House seeps in atmospheric brilliance. It has the uncanny ability to remind you just how boring your life is. The novel tackles relationship breakdowns from multiple angles. A mother and daughter. A house in the country. Creepy diary entries. Personally, living in a cold, damp property in the middle of winter is a dead cert no for me but the protagonist had a story to unfold. It’s December 1963 and Malorie escapes to the country with her daughter, Franny. Her life is changing far quicker than she could have ever anticipated. Her relationship with Franny’s father, Tony has broken down. Partly due to his multiple infidelities and Malorie’s…
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The Dinner Party by Richard Jay Parker
The Dinner Party is a dish best served cold. Mr. Parker, what on earth have you created? The opening chapter ensures that the reader isn’t going anywhere. Make sure you have cleared your schedule because you won’t do anything else whilst you are reading this book. No hoovering, no baking, no husbands asking where clean socks are lurking…this is a story to be consumed whole, with no breaks but plenty of tea and biscuits. So THAT first chapter – it sets up the story immediately, it has that hook that embeds in your mouth like a prized salmon. You may try and look away but one word, one yank of…
