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REVIEW: No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride
No Less the Devil is most definitely a tale of two parts. The first 80% is a taut, twisty detective novel with wit and sarcasm aplenty…the norm for a Stuart MacBride novel. The last 20% however, had me flummoxed. I uttered the words WTF a lot and found myself physically scratching my head. If this was the plot all along it felt incredibly rushed and didn’t make much sense. I can’t give much more away without big spoilers, trust me, you’ll just have to read it for yourself. No Less the Devil opens with the Bloodsmith still being at large. Seventeen months have passed and the officers conducting Operation Maypole…
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We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric LaRocca
We Can Never Leave This Place, I think probably I can’t. I’m trapped in a state of purgatory. How do you sum up a story that depicts such vivid imagery of neglect and trauma? I’m not going to lie; this book seems to be impossible to review with enough fervour to do it justice. It’s the kind of story that leaves you staring into space afterward. The musings playing around your consciousness like a never-ending loop. “When you’re given a gift, something else gets taken away.” Eric LaRocca is the king of trauma horror. Reading a story penned by this glorious author is always an experience. He leads you…
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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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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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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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REVIEW: What His Wife Knew by Jo Jakeman
What would you do if everything you knew, everything you lived for was suddenly snatched away at the drop of a hat? What His Wife Knew is a novel portraying a Wife’s denial and grief at being told her husband has died by Suicide. The remnants of her and her children’s lives are now a scattered ruin. She doesn’t know how to parent them in a way that they need, she can’t face doing the things that gave her pleasure…she is left in a wasteland of pain. With all, why does her husband committing suicide feel so wrong? The situation in What His Wife Knew is one of my worst…
