Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 2

An American Ghostlover in Cambridge

48. Trinity Grove – David VanMeter Smith

Nick Lombard is about to find out that having Italian heritage matters as an American at Cambridge. You see, some Roman soldiers, wearing their red cloaks, massacred an entire village of Celangi back in the 60ADs. And they’re still mad about it in 1990. Every 33 years, once a generation to them, some outlander will get super murdered at the holidays – Midsummer and Samain, at least due to calendar differences from the ancient times they’re getting murdered five days later. I mean, Nick’s an outlander two times over, he not only came across the sea, he’s got that murdery heritage to boot.

He’s also got friends interested in Celtic religion and a sketchy farm commune nearby who super love the old ways. And at first it seems like his new girlfriend, who he met coming out of Trinity Wood, the grove of giant oak trees to be exact, who he also got immediately sexy with when they met in said grove, came from that commune. Or Sweden. She has an accent that’s hard to place. She always controls when they see each other, like she’s got some sort of complicated schedule of drug manufacturing or farming or whatever. And she doesn’t really seem to want to meet his friends. Nick’s all in though, he loves his Gwenillan.

And it turns out she’s got something to do with the ancient history of the area and the latest super gruesome murder and a nice brooch. This was a fun read with the perspectives represented running around each other to figure out what was actually coming to pass.

 

Sometimes finding a sweetheart in the woods is not all it’s cracked up to be and then there’s Salem and Hen Wen.

“That house is not fit to live in. No one’s been able to live in it. It doesn’t want people.”

152. The Manse – Lisa W. Cantrell

I read the sequel first and this was better. The Merrillville, NC, Jaycees have been using the Beaufort mansion, known as the Manse, for their annual Halloween haunted house/gruesome horror attraction to frighten children to death while the elderly Beaufort sisters who own it are in assisted living. It’s a haunted house with some additional set ups that nobody ordered or approved.

Also, there are some relationships and friendships that are fraught with tension roaming around the mansion and distracting people, old love that was kind of controlling and abusive between Zack and Samantha, the potential for Samantha to move on with her life with the Jaycee’s and the Beaufort sisters’ lawyer Ted, and also L.J. aka Dood, who is friends with Samantha, clearly doesn’t care too much for Zack, and listens to his gut about the wrongness of the old house.

There’s no real explanation for the evils the house brings out, which wasn’t as disappointing for me because this switches perspectives a lot and that was distracting. Plus I didn’t exactly like the other two books I’ve read by Cantrell, so, my expectations weren’t for coherence and also there’s just Dood to count on for the researcher type role and he’s more action oriented, so you know he’s not about the microfilm. Plus there are many contemporary missing people throughout the story that the house eats, essentially, so, it’s a happening now kind of deal. Now as in the late 1980s, that is.

 

You know who always listened to his gut about scary houses? Salem.

This reads like a Halloween Lifetime movie.

72. The Chanting – Beverly T. Haaf

At first, I wasn’t sure what I was reading because the cover says “horror” with trees and that means potentially Druids (whee!), but the story says romance after tragedy like an autumn-set Lifetime movie. Although I did see The Guardian, where there is a bit of horror and trees and Druids on Lifetime the first time I saw it on TV and I believe it was October, the best month in cable television. Anyway, there are ghosts and a teensy bit of “You’re going mad, Janet,” but without her ex-husband, Janet has enough of a support network to not be shipped off to a hospital and locked up for experiencing psychic phenomena revolving around deceased children now that she has also lost a child and an apparently dickish to no end ex-husband.

Janet moves in with her sister and at her debut party at the Stocktons, the Virginia Stocktons that is, even though they’re in Princeton, meets a guy who sells solar energy equipment and a local historian and the Stocktons’ mute adopted daughter, Gina, oh, and her cat, who is a Siamese because they sound like crying babies and that can be used to explain Janet’s hearing phantom crying babies.

There are also some neighbors in a house Janet originally wanted to buy with her ex who are more interesting than the Virginia Stocktons and Gina thinks so too. An older woman, Rose, who has a hard time communicating and likes cats and wandering a bit is taken care of by her younger sister, who is married to a very scary looking former Austrian child psychologist who came to Princeton from Argentina. So, he’s clearly a former Nazi, said my brain, because who else does that route? I mean, it’s possible he’s not, but in books that route is usually a red flag for Nazis. Well, I know it’s a spoiler, but I was right. He was a Nazi, although he thought his experiments on children were not political… Okey dokey.

Janet for some reason is not aware of the “Nazi war criminals moving to South America thing” and she thinks the original person to own the house who used it as an orphanage must have been a madwoman who abused children because of all the very sad ghostly apparitions she keeps seeing. Way to blame women and be wrong, Janet. At least she wants to take Gina trick or treating.

 

Does Peregrine blame Ozma for getting them into this pumpkin photoshoot? Yes, she does. Pere also thinks Ozma is a madladypig, even though Pere’s sitting atop the pumpkin like it’s her throne.

 

“I am ready to return, but understand, I shall use undreamed-of measures, to conquer the evil.”

85. Night of the Witch Hunter – Patrick Barb

Josey has made what sounds like an amazing video reenacting the one witch trial Fallen Church, NH had back in 1693 and it broke. During class. And as the class weirdo, along with her best friend/potential girlfriend Nikki, she is treated as though she is the worst person possible for making said video by her history teacher. The teacher called it “blasphemous” in 1999. Yikes.

Josey and Nikki in order to make this a better day decide to have a seance and try to talk to the one accused witch, who also happens to be Josey’s relation. However, when they go through with this plan in Josey’s bedroom, they get the witch hunter pulled into the present instead. And what a witch hunter he is, as in, he’s also a witch. He even taught the accused witch; I don’t think he liked ladies asking questions or having any power of any kind. He’s quite insidious and bulbous.

This was a very fast and fun read. I could practically smell the menthols (ew) and see the Peter Steele poster. And I would like to see that video. Barbie reenactments are sometimes quite awesome.

 

Pammy and Thaddeus are on the lookout for any witch hunters who might try and steal their pumpkin or accuse them of witchery. No one can prove anything.

Worst corn maze ever

139. Small Spaces – Katherine Arden

Ollie (Olivia) has a dad who makes all the bread and all the muffins and cooks with aplomb, but she has lost her mother who knew the math and the nature and she’s still navigating her place in the world without her mother and wants to mostly be alone and read. She’s also a sixth grader, so, she’s also throwing things a little bit (with extreme accuracy) and getting very tired and mad.

She has a spot she likes to read in and one day she finds a very upset lady there with a weird little book. For some reason, Ollie decides she should take this book so the lady can’t throw it in the river, despite the lady saying she has to do that, and so now Ollie’s aware of a local supernatural element she didn’t know she would be joining.

And a bus trip to the local farm, with its myriad weirdo scarecrows, solidifies that supernatural situation and puts Ollie, Coco (who is frilly, but trying very hard to be friendly to Ollie), and Brian (hockey star, knows Alice in Wonderland very well) in a race to escape being lost on the farm forever, like the characters in the book Ollie stole. It was creepy and warm and inviting at the same time. Ollie’s a resourceful girl and this is a solid middle grade story for fall.

 

Danger Crumples and Ozymandias know the local supernatural element is totally worth joining in Pighalla.

“There is nothing so quiet as a heart that has ceased to beat.”

64. The Caveman – Jorn Lier Horst

Another superb Wisting mystery, The Caveman is a longer one and involves a serial killer importing himself to Norway because of his ancestry, proving that habit USicans have of talking about their ancestry as “where they’re from” does actually mean something. Sometimes. When you’re going “home” to murder blonde women for 20 years without being noticed, I guess. Highly specific context.

Anyway, the concept of a “caveman” not being related to early hominids was unfamiliar to me, but it’s finding someone whose life you can take over completely without anyone noticing… so you can keep murdering blonde women and throwing them in disused wells. The person that US serial killer Robert Godwin chose had a friend who noticed he wasn’t the same person he used to be; but he didn’t have enough personal connections/power to be taken seriously and thus the murder spree continued across Norway and Sweden unabated, until someone put a boulder on a well and Line decided to write about the deceased neighbor she also ignored.

I read this one after having seen the first season of the Wisting TV show and so I was missing Maggie Griffin in the book. She was a great character on the show and a good foil for Hammer that made some parts more entertaining. And I was waiting to figure out how they sorted out who the “caveman” was because in the book Line is much more involved and that was actually pretty good.

 

Wisting’s life was way too full to be taken over by a serial killer looking to hide, he had sweeties like Dagmar to notice.

Witchqueen or Witch-queen?

108. The Blackwood Cult – T.A. Waters

There were so many typos in this book! The second full paragraph, the last page, in between there were many…i before e EXCEPT after c, book. Except. And I must admit, the “larger type” and “non-glare paper” that my copy has just made the typos stand out more.

Another “typo” seems to be the missing witchcult that’s supposed to be in the story. Supposedly, Wendy Markham is returning to the town of Blackwood and running into a witchcult that has taken over the town. But…Wendy doesn’t run into a witchcult that has taken over the town. Her uncle seems to want to disprove the local witch at a dinner party, or murder her, or perform an illusion as good as any witch would be able to, it was actually a little hard to tell. And the townspeople who did come to the dinner party were not part of any controlling group at all, it was mostly a lot of running around trying to solve a murder that had absolutely nothing to do with witchcraft or a cult, sooo disappointing.

However, if someone has been labeled a witch in town, or a witchqueen or a witch-queen as of course it was both ways, and they were invited to dinner, why not blame her for murder? Why not? To be fair, Katy Campbell is not mislabeled as a witch of sorts, she practices old school religion in a robe with aspects that seem vaguely connected to witchcraft (like someone only went with what they saw on TV instead of reading an article or two about the basics of Wicca) and she does know that because she’s different, she’ll be persecuted forever. Pretty much still true for anyone who is different regardless of any platitudes I’ve ever heard about acceptance.

The blurb on the back seems like it’s for the parts of this book that got edited out because Katy clearly has a house and doesn’t just live in the old church she practices in and Wendy doesn’t encounter a witchcult or much actual menace throughout the townspeople (no Dead and Buried here), but she does fall in love! I think that was the actual point of the story, but I thought there would be a witchcult. There was supposed to be a cult, it’s in the title.

 

Hen Wen dreams of a witchcult with good grammar.

“Bug off or you’ll find that you have blown your mind”

22. Bethany’s Sin – Robert McCammon

So, moving to a small town can be very difficult. Especially if you are haunted by your past because that always comes with you and when you’re trying to deal with the nightmares and it seems like the town is making them worse. That’s what Evan is dealing with and he doesn’t seem to be the only man in town with some extra troubles like, say, missing limbs. Also, it’s too quiet there. I mean, personally, that would never be a problem, but for Evan and his small family, he sees the extreme quiet as suspicious.

Technically, he’s right to be suspicious. Bethany’s Sin isn’t just a town with a weird name. They also have a museum. A suspicious museum. It is also suspicious that the women in this town seem to be more in charge than any of the men… And there’s a hunt, at night, when the moon is strong, that is conducted by all women on horseback, like Amazon women, and I can see how Evan would not see any of that as cool. I thought it was cool.

You can tell it’s not McCammon at what will be his full strength as a novelist here, but it’s still fun and gory and graphic and worth it because he is such a great writer that even not full strength is great. And of course electric blue makes an appearance or two, as is traditional in McCammon books. This is a very early novel, but it was fun and I really enjoyed that it is a little more contained in scope since you’re stuck in the small town instead of, like, global consequences or a journey, even though I really like his journey stories too, this one was just quite punchy in one place.

 

Ozma also thinks the museum sounds cool and she’s fine with leading the hunt. She knows what to do.

 

“Screaming into the Void” Festival wasn’t appealing enough?

165. Cicada – Tanya Pell

Ash and her boyfriend Richie are arguing on their way to a Nu Metal festival – which is near impossible not to do in a car with no AC while driving through Mississippi in the summer, regardless of your relationship. Ash and Richie should have already broken up, but they are trying to save their relationship with a road trip. They will not succeed.

Instead, in an impulsive move, Richie takes an exit with no labels and they end up in a small town (Revelation, MS) having a movie festival for their very own found footage film, Cicada. Ash hasn’t heard of it and with more fighting happening in a diner because she and Richie will never stop arguing ever, she runs into the woods and finds a giant cicada and re-runs into a good looking dude who seems a little sarcastic, hope for the future!

And then the weirdness piles up and the slaughter starts. This is the second entry in the Killer VHS series I’ve read and I’ve liked them both. They’re short, they’re fun, and they’re gory horror.

 

Mississippi pigs Thaddeus and Pammy think this couple should have rented a car with AC. That humidity’s a killer, give or take the giant cicadas.

“I’m sure you know that nobody comes here to browse.”

88. That Night in the Library – Eva Jurczyk

At first I wasn’t sure exactly what to think of this, and I will say I was concerned about the comparisons I saw to The Secret History, but I don’t think that lasts past the Greek ritual thing, which is actually a little thin and seemed more like a BS reason to have a sneaky party. The Secret History might have been more enjoyable to me if they were all just stuck in a library basement for a night and then it was over. This was much tighter and the character whose head we’re in the most often, Faye, was both an odd choice and more relatable to me than our conduit in The Secret History as well.

The characters for the most part are not likeable and they’re spending the evening stuck in a basement with rare books so they can do a ritual and essentially have a party, which makes me think somebody’s not thinking about the books needing to be safe from them in their drug induced ritualizing – but thankfully there were hints of thinking of the books unlike in The Day After Tomorrow when they burned rare books instead of literally anything else – furniture, more easily reacquired books, the magazine section, I mean, really… Faye, who apparently has made it all the way to university without a single hint of human connection (I mean, I like her dog connection story, Beans, but this just seemed a stretch and I say this as a solitary person), does care about the books and is capable enough to figure out which rare books would be more able to absorb more blood, even when maybe they shouldn’t be asked to do that.

They’re in the basement with a lack of options for cleaning up blood due to the poor planning/wishful thinking of Davey, who also thinks no one is going to find out he invited several people down there to stay the night and ritualize and hid things like a single ear of corn in a basket instead of paper towels or a first aid kit. And he thinks he’s going to get the salaried job.

I haven’t even covered the other unlikeable characters, including the first person to die and the source of the mystery, Kip. Kip’s death is a result of an absolutely brilliant killer and although I was on the fence for the vast majority of the book about whether or not I liked it, I love the ending resolution. Love it. I’m not going to spoil it, but I have experience with that situation (non-murdery, a warning) in my own library career and instructing student workers, and so to see that I was totally chuffed. And also the resolution managed to bring in very realistic police work, which was also very unexpected, even if they were a bit late.

 

Murderface and Mortemer know how thoroughly they would judge sneaky library party havers. Very thoroughly. No promotions for anyone.