Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 27

I did not expect to see the word “stalagmite” in this book.

34. The Secret of the Chateau – Caroline Farr

Denise has lost her grandfather in New Orleans and suddenly, she hears from her Uncle Gerard in France and he wants her to come visit and first she should vacation in Paris! Whee!

Uncle Gerard is a World War II hero and at great cost because his face was burned, his arm and hand were burned, and he lost his right hand, all being tortured by the Nazis to the point where he wears a mask and gets super upset when anyone sees him and screams…and yet, now he likes German wine. Very not French. He has a housekeeper who doesn’t seem to have any idea how to keep a house and does nothing but be suspicious and insulting towards Denise.

When Denise takes a day trip from the Chateau of the Vultures her uncle now owns to see the village their whole family grew up in, she meets a French secret agent/painter (yep) who is trying to track down a notorious war criminal and believes he may be in the area. I dare you to guess where this ends up.

Yes, she’s going to fall in love with the painter, but she does almost fall in a cave where the war criminals hid some bodies, that was a twist.

 

Thorfy’s not in the French countryside hunting war criminals, but he is in paintings.

 

“Some kind of degenerated process has begun which may be catastrophic for everybody.”

22. The Ice Lands – Steinar Bragi

A road trip though Iceland’s sands, where it seems roads are very hard to discern, does not make for fun if you run the Jeep into a farmhouse you couldn’t see through all the fog. The farmhouse happens to be inhabited by an elderly couple, the male half of which seems to need a bit more caretaking than is available in the middle of nowhere.

The weather and a second Jeep with terrible tires keep preventing them from actually getting anywhere, even though they have a compass. Their interpersonal relations have not been good anyway and they’re getting worse, which is the main thing in the story that is explained via flashbacks for each character to show how they got to where they are today…stuck in that weirdo land of no explanations. There also seems to be an undercurrent of madness running through the proceedings and it’s hard to tell what’s real (especially at the end), what’s happening because of those foxes that seem to be the only ones having a good time in the area, and what’s just a little out of my reach.

I like horror and this is certainly a horror novel, but it isn’t a very satisfying one. Even though I think the translation is good. I would have liked just a little more explanation because I also thought there was an additional someone in the house with coherent thoughts and plans and that never went anywhere. The reader is stuck without much to work with for backstory on the what’s going on parts, like the lady who lives in the farmhouse and doesn’t know how to make a frozen pizza.

 

Horace, Peregrine, Ozma, and Finny on a couch trip certainly also has an undercurrent of madness, even though they have a pen and don’t need to worry about transportation.

It could be the “Shitty Beetles” of podcasts.

119. The Girls Are Never Gone – Sarah Glenn Marsh

Dare is bisexual and diabetic and now that she’s broken up with her boyfriend and podcast partner, she is starting an internship at a house with a lake-based deathy mystery and starting her own podcast about it. If podcasting and hearing about someone worrying about it appeals to you, this book will be a nice little YA treat. If not, it’s still okay, it’s just got one boring anchor that draws it down.

It’s got a lot of elements I would call cute – Dare and Quinn bonding over liking podcasts and ghost hunting while falling for each other amongst the ghostiness is cute and Dare’s dog Waffles, who collects shoes and is supposed to be alerting her about her blood sugar but fails sometimes, is also cute. Dare and Quinn and Holly becoming friends over all the scary stuff is also cute.

But overall for me this wasn’t too scary or too intriguing or very fun, it was mostly just there. I didn’t think the haunting was very scary or presented in a way that worked to creep me out and that is definitely possible in YA. I wasn’t all that bothered about the central mysteries in part because a hidden door meant a cliffhanger for the podcast and that took the wind out of it for me. Being concerned about posting and engagement is not something I’m unfamiliar with, but not something I actually wanted to read about.

Plus, it had that “suddenly popular” thing, with Dare even being recognized in a tiny town for her other podcast; I think that doesn’t happen for a lot of random new podcasts. And ones with a name like “Attachments,” which I would point out is borderline unsearchable, would maybe have a problem because that name also does not speak to haunted houses or ghosts very directly. It’s not a clever name. It’s something you’re not supposed to click on from an unfamiliar sender.

 

I will admit that if someone made a podcast that was solely the sounds of guinea pigs talking to each other, I would listen to that one. Especially if it was Ozma and Peregrine because they didn’t like each other too terribly much, so there were lots of interesting discussions. As you can see here, Peregrine is skeptical of Ozma potentially getting too close.

“Oh yeah! I better check my cages!”

39. Eternal Bliss – Christopher Fahy

All Bliss Marshall did was be successful and talented and beautiful and it attracted madness. Bliss is attending Bowdoin and trying to keep a career and a college education going at the same time. It’s not very easy and she’s obviously a bit tired. What she didn’t know was she was going to get quite the break in the form of being kidnapped by her stalker, Alan Swan. Alan, like many stalkers who take the step of kidnapping the object of their obsession, does not get what he thought he was getting when he kidnapped and imprisoned Bliss. He gets upset. Because Bliss is a person, one who has a stage name even, and not the ideal of womanhood he thought she was. Alan has many meltdowns over this, which did not surprise me at all. There is a saying about not meeting your idols, Alan.

 

You can get pignapped for being young and adorable and talented? Belvedere didn’t know.

Staying quiet all the time is unsettling.

106. Such a Pretty Smile – Kristi DeMeester

Lila’s mother Caroline is very strict and won’t let Lila do much of anything when all she wants is to be able to go along with her one friend Macie – who, to be fair, is only ever encouraging her to do stupid shit for a boy whose older brother Macie likes – because she has a crush on Macie. I personally thought Macie was not crush worthy as she does not listen to a word Lila says and is only in it for herself, trying to get Lila to sneak out during a sleepover after girls in their area have been found murdered and severely mutilated. Lila also knows her mother somehow knows something about these murders, has a sickness that is later revealed, and has a past that she continues to refuse to talk about, all of which make Lila feel isolated and unhappy in a two person home.

Caroline’s past in New Orleans and what drove her to move up near Atlanta with Lila is explained in flashbacks that were really propelling the story along. See, even Caroline doesn’t entirely remember a big piece of her past and she’s doing her best to respond to the men in her life telling her what she needs to do when she’s having visions and losing time and hearing ravenous dogs at Jazzland. Caroline not telling Lila about the parts of her past she does understand is a major oversight on her part as it all comes together for her, also at Jazzland.

It was really weird to me that this book somehow made Jazzland menacing. I have only seen ruined Jazzland while driving into New Orleans post-Katrina, but I have been to Six Flags in St. Louis, so it wasn’t foreign territory to me to describe this brand of amusement park…but this makes Jazzland while open the most haunting of amusement parks, a place where multiple women have had auditory hallucinations of a pack of wolves or dogs barking and apparently it was built on a site of mass murder for ladies.

I read this all in one sitting, not at Jazzland, and it was creepy and scary and gave me that “no one is listening to her” dread feeling.

 

Snuffy hates most noises, so, both jazz and auditory hallucinations of ravenous dogs are out. She’s also very fierce, as can be seen in her stance and facial expression in which she is not smiling.

 

“Oh indeed, indeed… that is why I shall have to employ someone for whom ethics have no significance.”

114. The Joseph Stone – Jacqueline La Tourrette

The Occult-Gothic tale of a Celt spirit that wants a girlfriend and finally, finally 24 year old Monica – an American girl with a thesis to write and some psychic ability – comes to the Irish vacation home to rent a room for a while. There’s another psychic who is already staying there and has been trying to investigate and sort out what’s haunting them, Mr. Hughes realizes right away that Monica brought the spirit out to really get after it when the turf shed explodes her first night.

There’s a 16 year old in the house with her aunt as well and a doctor who hasn’t told anyone he’s a doctor until Monica blurts it out. Weirdly, the 16 year old and Monica the 24 year old are pitted as the two who could end up making out with the doctor, who is clearly over 30. That was awkward. The doctor is a skeptic and has a daughter and is technically married but vacationing by himself and thankfully does not go in for it when the Celt spirit pushes the 16 year old into his room one night. Nope, instead he and Monica will have a weird discussion later about how it’s not right for them to get together yet and they want it to be done ethically. That was unexpected.

Anyway, the stone itself is a Christian addition to Cor Hill, but it does play a strong part in the resolution of the Celt spirit and Monica’s relationship, which was not to be pursued ethically. Beyond the grave on the Bron Trograin festival night is just not a time for restraint.

 

Thaddeus doesn’t understand what the big deal is, he has a girlfriend, Pammy, and the power to explode a turf shed, he doesn’t make a big deal of it.

 

The saga of Mr. Leg.

130. Flight Risk – Cherie Priest

I was confused at the very beginning of this because I thought the young girl looking for her dog was talking to Grady, the returning homicide detective character in this series…but she wasn’t. She was…[more fake suspense pause]…Grady’s daughter. And thankfully, the missing dog part was resolved when he returned from the wilderness of Mt. Rainier with part of a leg. It was oriented more towards the ridiculous than the dog with the hand in Yojimbo, but Grady’s reaction was similar.

And thus a murder victim is located and he turns out to be a creep professor in Seattle at UW, with a missing wife, so it turns out to be Grady and Leda’s case to work on, well, cases.

Leda is still her very noisy and blurty self along with her friend Niki, who tags along on more excursions this time so there is a two-person counterpoint to Grady’s straightlaced detective; who is more open than detectives usually are in stories like this because this series is more of a light-murder situation. Not cozy, or maybe it is. Maybe it’s the kind of cozy mystery I am interested in reading. But my point is that a lot of Seattle-based murder really uses bleak rainy atmosphere and greys and greens to set the mood and this series doesn’t (and not just because this one is set during the summer). Finding a corpse in a tree doesn’t have to be bleak. It can be ridiculous and that is sometimes way more interesting.

 

If anyone could look for missing persons while being noisy, it’s Pickles. Her search would also be very cute and in a small space, she’s very small despite being a chonk of a guinea pig.

 

“As I wander through this dark and lonely forest of life, surrounded by various beasts…bears, vipers, squirrels, not to mention small tree growing lichen…”

41. The Devil’s Dance – Jan Alexander

So, this Satanic Gothic, despite the title, does not involve anything supernatural at all and that bothered me. It instead is about old family and racial feuds and the New York City woman who becomes caught in between them. And I had to look up the racial part because I hadn’t encountered the term “Melungeon” until I read it like 200 times in this book. When they mentioned someone being able to infiltrate a household and cause mischief because she had lighter skin and dyed her hair blonde, it finally struck me that this might be racial and this was not a supernaturally based term. Fine, but this was like the worst one of the Satanic Gothics I’ve read. The title is totally misleading too, it refers to some weird patchiness on a lawn and no one, no one was invited to it or saw one appear or anything. It did end up with sinkholes consuming the bitter rivalry and two families becoming intertwined, all thanks to the one New York City woman who decided to visit her sister in the middle of nowhere instead of going to Florida.

 

Merricat would like to remind everyone that it is also possible to be consumed by a sinkhole in Florida. Or a variety of beasts and impenetrable vegetation. Or moral quandaries.

 

Short version: The ending ruined this book. Dee-readful.

74. Hearts Strange and Dreadful – Tim McGregor

We can’t have a successful underdog, can we? Not here. You can lose your parents in a fire, come to live with relatives who make you their main maid instead of allowing you to be a relative and guest with your “I just lost my whole family and my face is burned, so I am totally self-conscious” grief, use your very useful old timey medical knowledge to do the best to help with an unforeseen malady, get constantly insulted by some asshole named Tom, know your future was basically extinguished by the fire because no one will want to marry the maid with the scar, help figure out the supernatural elements of what’s plaguing your town, and do some gruesome stuff to save your family and the town as well from evil…and yet, the author is going to screw you over in the end too.

Hester knew her life was not going to be great – and it isn’t. And it will stay bad or get worse. And that is not a fun read for anyone who feels like an outsider or anyone who likes to see the heroine’s journey end with some well-deserved credit. It is fiction, Tim, you don’t have to keep dumping on the woman and leave her with her stupid crush as the only “good” thing she gets for all her sorrows.

The thing I see coming to her is an abusive relationship, because throwing an egotistical user together with someone who loves them even though they shouldn’t is one of the ways that happens. He will take advantage and blame her for his own bad decisions and she will be deluding herself that she’s got what she wanted, which is exactly what that ending scene says to me.

Hester would have been better off dying in the ending fire with Will, who actually cared about her and helped her with the evil. But Will lives, so she’ll know there is someone who cares about her and didn’t want to make her the maid around to see her humiliated by her husband. If she had run into Will on that night she ran away instead of her dumbass crush Henry, it would have been a better scene, a better book, and not just another reminder for women who don’t behave or live up to ridiculous beauty standards that their future is humiliation and not respect, just out of circumstance.

 

Salem always reacted to guinea pigs making noise on my TV, so I know he is more than willing to save any ladypigs from being humiliated by circumstance. He’s cute and concerned.

“This is really removing Lucifer’s trousers!”

128. Ritual – David Pinner

I finally got my hands on a copy of Ritual, which was the catalyst for The Wicker Man becoming a film. It is not The Wicker Man, in fact, it’s way more wordy and confusing than The Wicker Man, but there are many aspects which are clearly the basis for at least one sexy lady character and her major beating the wall scene and the general vibe of occult investigation making policeman angry and punchy, which even occurs in the Nicolas Cage Wicker Man. Also, no matter what, these children are both creepy and annoying and I do wish they would have stuck to “gang” when referring to them because it was more accurate on several levels.

Ritual is from 1967, so it comes with lots of things that would not be said or nicknamed today in polite company. It also definitely comes with some actions that would get policemen fired right away, not so fired that they are burned in a giant wicker structure, but very, very unemployed and arrested. That is not how you question children, even if they are really offensive.

Inspector Hanlin really wasn’t ethical at all and I hardly think his methods would hold up in a court even though he shouted into the phone for a Forensic. He still kept putting evidence in his pockets and being a jackass. And why didn’t he have backup sunglasses if the sun hurt his mauve eyes so much? Non-prescription sunglasses have always been easier to get than prescription eyeglasses, so, no excuse in my opinion. He was a man of many rude and jarring contradictions and did not inspire sympathy, in fact, no one in this story did. Maybe Gilly, but she’s it.

 

Mortemer thinks Hanlin’s methods are not going to bring back your bees or your apples or hold up in court. At all.