Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 55

“Are you capable of holding down a man who is thrashing and calling you names?”

35. Silence for the Dead – Simone St. James

Although this book is basically a romantic ghost story and I was expecting just a ghost story, its subject matter is oddly prescient for the Memorial Day holiday during a pandemic.

It’s 1919, Kitty Weekes lies and gets hired as a nurse at Portis House. It’s in the middle of nowhere and takes care of shell-shocked soldiers. But…are they really shell-shocked or are they just being hidden by their families and plagued by those who haunt that house? Are the ghosts related to the family that built the house who also completely disappeared? Why is the library so seriously depressing as to change the mood of everyone who goes over by it? Why is that one patient never at dinner?

Well, since Kitty has no idea how to be a nurse and she’s dealing with lots of very sensitive patients and also working the night shift with little opportunity for sleep (which is very hard, let me tell you), it takes her very little time to make everything go topsy-turvy. She uncovers that the patient who doesn’t come to dinner is the war hero mascot who gave many rousing speeches for the press to inspire everyone to endure the war. He got panache and he’s apparently also a madman (self-labeled) and Kitty the not a nurse keeps falling into his room and telling him things she wouldn’t tell anyone else. To be fair, I also know someone who used to be in the army who has that effect, but, does not self-label as a madman.

Anyway, it’s a good thing for Kitty that a lot of the patients aren’t really in need of constant nursing. Several clearly have PTSD symptoms, which makes perfect sense, and one has apparently embarrassed his wealthy family by losing his legs so they put him here rather than endure the shame of having a hero who sacrificed actual limbs for the cause in their midst. In this story, their illnesses involve a lot of shame being put on them that they never should have had to even hear about. And it’s institutionalized to make money- because of course it is.

Thankfully, once the ghosts truly get going, most of the soldiers/patients learn how functional they really are, are allowed to remember themselves as people with will, and then lots of the staff and soldiers come down with the flu – the baddest of influenza – and Kitty realizes she has also learned something from the other nursing staff in addition to the madman/war hero mascot and got it together. Phew.

The other book I’ve read by Simone St. James also involved ghosts and certain spaces causing certain morose feelings, but there wasn’t a romance element. This was a good read overall, it just wasn’t as engaging as the other for someone with my taste because I kept rolling my eyes and thinking about fraternization and boundaries and service and why can’t people just work together and also keep those boundaries like they’re supposed to? It’s not like the ghosts would have left if there was no damseling. They had their own jobs in that house replaying their shitty history.

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Horace isn’t afraid of doing his job without proper training or the flu. Or ghosts, since he could be one and he’d be the best kind of have in the house.

Watch out for that snake of hers too.

18. Underground – Kat Richardson

For once, we are in a part of Seattle I can easily recognize from the one time I got to go there – the buried part aka the Seattle Underground. I enjoyed that tour because it was not as outside as really being outside. However, according to this book it contains a very angry monster and apparently that monster is also a relationship crimp – forcing a relationship that just doesn’t really feel like it should be there. I’m sorry Quinton, I just didn’t quite believe you’d melt Harper’s cold exterior with your also cold exterior. I guess having a monstrous warrior goddess who is also known as “Afraid-of-Nothing” has some influence on relationship choices for cold people.

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Thaddeus and Pammy’s relationship needed no mythic warrior attacks to get them together. Just a spaying to take care of some ovarian cysts. Still epic on a much smaller scale. No cities were nearly destroyed.

The Cheerleader Effect

10. Dare Me – Megan Abbott

There’s something about lip gloss, glitter, hair gel, and cigarette smoke together that just screams “cheerleading competition.” We could go to state, you know, having a new, young, fresh, hip coach could help us get to state and like, do better stunts, and win. Win competitions. All we have to do is just act like total bitches on our off time and help cover up the coach’s inappropriate behavior. We’ll hang out at her house and make sure her husband doesn’t know she’s cheating with the ROTC guy and maybe we can make regionals if no one gets murdered or smears their eye make up too hard.

Considering that the image of cheerleaders as completely wholesome enthusiastic youth just trying to inspire the crowd with yelling and yet more athleticism is not one I ever knew to be true…well, whatever. I mean, some of them are infected by Simon Fear’s evil and some of them are promiscuous and can’t get off their phones. Mine’s a werewolf. They’re just like all other girls but compartmentalized by their outfits and having people stare at them at games. And now, that staring will also be on TV.

Will I watch teen girls be edgy just because I read the book? Maybe. I thought this book was not that good though, so, maybe not. I like Abbott’s re-telling of that one girl murdering her dad and becoming a scientist better. She was scary. Beth was mostly bitter and greedy for power over other teens while she could still be cool. Just like the coach, which is just sad.

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Being a more skittish pig keeps Salem out of all kinds of trouble. He’s not on probation, he’s not smoking at motels with high school students, he’s not a bad influence of the children he’s not coaching, he’s never put on lip gloss…

“Here young maiden, take a potion of cat feces and dove hearts boiled in moonlight.”

62. The Merciless – Danielle Vega

Satan and the ‘Sip. I only refer to Mississippi as “the ‘Sip” while writing this blog…why I’m nicknaming it years after I left is beyond me. Anyway, Sofia Flores moved to Mississippi because she had to, her mom is in the military. She ends up cutting her finger and almost befriending a girl with clothing that she would have been kicked out of school for wearing if she was really in Mississippi – a gauzy top you could see her black bra through – so you know she’s up to no good even if she has Bandaids readily available to share.

But before she can befriend that fun alternative girl, she’s picked up by the most beautiful and powerful girl in school – Riley – and her gang of sycophants, the blonde one and the fashionable one. They like Jesus and underage drinking in an abandoned house, which was honestly hard for to picture because it’s Mississippi and an abandoned house would be hot as hell all the time. The air there is like soup. It is not easy to walk very long and dehydrating yourself drinking box wine is really, really not going to help, even with the vigor of youth. It took me like all five years I was there to get used to the heat and not be an instant mess of sweat during the summer and I was way more youthesque than I am now, Sofia’s been there like three weeks.

Moving on from my “this doesn’t ring true” issues with the representation of the climate, it does ring true to have hypocrites trying to push their Jesus-adoration on the new kids. Indoctrinate! In this case, it leads to badness in that same abandoned house with that poor gauzy-topped bandaid haver. Ridiculous badness. Gruesome badness. The gruesomeness was impressive, actually.

In The Merciless, if you’re making the “right” choices – it goes badly. If you’re making “bad” choices – it goes badly. Everything goes badly for pretty much everyone whether they’re cruel religious fanatics, Sofia’s grandma, demonically possessed, a fake friend, or a cat.

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Fine. To be fair, Murderface and Pickles had no idea how humid Mississippi really is and they were born there. Of course, they basically never went outside or walked anywhere either.

Slow roast

80. The Hunger – Alma Katsu

Anyone looking for an enjoyable romp through the Donner Party’s voyage would be ill informed at best, however, in Katsu’s The Hunger, it’s even worse than just getting trapped and ending up eating each other. That at least was a matter of circumstance and bad navigation. Nature proving to people that they cannot just do whatever, manifest destiny be damned. This hunger is the endless black hole of the supernatural up against a group of settlers, some of whom think having a lot of money is going to save them. Not so much.

It’s one thing to be out on an adventure, somewhere you’ve never been before, and bring the prejudices and old bullshit from your previous life with you like being a total jerk is somehow a great way to move across the wilderness. It’s another thing to do that while being stalked by an endlessly yawning set of mouths that you can’t really verify are there. The members of the Donner Party in The Hunger are nicely drawn and their backstories make this a bit more than a historical fiction style countdown to no people tale. The atmosphere Katsu created managed to include that feeling of the sky being too big that you get in the west and make it both inspiring and super creepy.

In the end, it is usually people who ruin things, can’t accept each other for who they are, can’t accept themselves or try to be better because it’s more fun and easier to put someone else down and this story is no different…except for the people-eating.

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Mortemer had this issue with his hunger at one point, he was drinking all the time and eating, but losing weight. It turned out he was not becoming a wendigo, he just had a thyroid issue. After his surgery, he jumped out of his carrier at home and started eating like a tiny horse.

Boo

55. Shadow Kiss – Richelle Mead

Grief! Well, this series is progressing in a romantically brutal way. Such is the way of teenage dramas, but in this one, there are so many more stakes. And the fancy element-magic vampires are finally getting some ideas about fighting for themselves alongside their guardians instead of just standing around. And of course, this comes alongside a major rite of passage for the novice guardians that involves being surprised all over campus – but Rose is being surprised more so by a ghost than her teachers. Rose is also having some trouble admitting that she wants to be in charge of her own fate much more succinctly and is feeling the tension of being forced into a role in which she can’t choose to be with who she loves. Of course, that won’t be quite as much of a problem as of the end of this book…

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A guinea pig’s one true love is food and Merricat knows she was never to be separated from it.

Sometimes the movie is better…

37. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

All the manipulation one could ever dream of in one relationship. Gone Girl really takes all the awful things people in a relationship can do to each other and magnifies them, then throws them back in your face, and it dares you to hate everyone in the entire story. Amy’s terrible. Nick’s terrible. I think the only character that really has any standard of respectability that’s maintained is the cat. And Go, for the most part. But, ugh, pretty much everyone else.

That “cool girl” passage is really worth the price of the book, though. The movie version only enhances how awesome that part is. This is also a movie that I like better than the book – it sort of distilled the essence (Flynn really made a nice set of moves adapting her own work) and you don’t have to be stuck in Nick or Amy’s head when they’re on screen. Affleck is such a smarmy asshole, he was perfect as Nick. Rosamund Pike was easily able to tiptoe down that line between sweet-pretender and sociopathic-terror. Carrie Coon and Tyler Perry were my favorites though. They both really fit their characters and provided the necessary counterpoint. And, as usual, the Fincher-Reznor sound and vision combination was excellent.

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Pammy will eat all the celery she wants. She doesn’t care if any dude thinks she’s cool. She does what she wants.

A bunch of magic

79. Dime Store Magic – Kelley Armstrong

In the Otherworld there are two major female protagonists – there’s Elena of the first two books and werewolves, and there’s Paige the witch. Paige is introduced, along with several of the characters in Dime Store Magic, in Stolen. She’s just been thrown into a large amount of responsibilities after the death of her mother. Paige is now taking care of the young witch Savannah who was imprisoned with Elena in Stolen. Savannah is a totally big deal to everyone in the Otherworld because she is so powerful and also is not in control of her powers. And Paige is a good witch and Savannah is wanted by the not-good magic peeps and so there’s like conflict there and stuff. The cabals of the Otherworld make a big splash in this one, including Lucas Cortez of the Cortez cabal. He’s there to help! Or is he…

I’ll be honest as usual, I find Paige to be uninteresting. She’s scattered but thinks she knows everything and she and Savannah seem more like roommates- and it was a bit of an obvious set up with Lucas, but at the same time it felt forced. There’s an odd lack of chemistry with the characters considering this book involves witchcraft. It’s like when someone tells you a show is really good, but to avoid the pilot. In the Otherworld, if Bitten and Stolen are the first two seasons, Dime Store Magic reads like an ill-advised spin off series.

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Ozma was also a big deal based on being powerful, despite being very small.

80. Counterfeit Magic

This one’s a novella, so it’s real short, which helps me since I’m not the biggest fan of these witches. And it involves a supernatural fight club. Like in Angel. Or Thor: Ragnarok. Or one of those things that happen when you have an inventive and bored special effects crew. Has this been a challenge on Face Off? Can your make up survive supernatural fight club and will anyone be able to talk about it?

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Finny and Ozma’s “no, we weren’t just fighting” faces.

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Seconds earlier.

84. Industrial Magic

The other early full length Otherworld witch book involves Paige’s more bureaucratic and diplomatic sides. Yes. A new style of coven sounds like a great idea, but if only she had brochures or a Power Point presentation. Thankfully, that is not the main focus of Industrial Magic and there are more characters who are more interesting who show up; even Lucas becomes more interesting in this one because we find out some backstory about his family disagreements. Phew. No offense to Paige, but in this case even though there are maybe too many characters in this one, they are a bit of a blessing. They require action.

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Ozma and Finny required lettuce-based action.

“It was a hell of a plan. On paper.”

65. Green Lake – S.K. Epperson

I realized that at the end of this book Madeline was living what is technically my absolute nightmare without the emotional involvement, and yet, for her, I was in support.

She’s the bread winner after her husband gets laid off from his job and takes it like a whiny kid – he won’t take any other kind of job, he won’t make any effort to help himself, he just keeps acting like his ego is the most important thing that has ever been injured. He kills himself when she decides to leave. Of course, besides this, his family blames her, one of her jackass students also somehow knows and blames her, she had a traumatic experience in her anthropology field work, and she’s feeling quite done with the world around her. Thankfully, her sister offers her their cabin. She and her husband only come up on weekends, it’s surrounded by weirdos, and one seriously taciturn conservation officer lives next door; she can live rent free and write for those grants so she could maybe go back into the field? It seemed like a good plan on paper. But, as any woman living alone knows, there are folk who think you’re a threat or their potential property because you are “unclaimed” and not hideous. It’s especially bad if you’re smart, as Madeline well knows and experiences.

And as usual with S.K. Epperson, there’s some scary, scary happenings around. The brutal kind. Fully realized humans doing what makes them feel powerful and very sad animals (there’s usually some kind of animal violence in her books, which is just a warning) and in this one, a lot of digging. Very suspicious digging.

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Thorfinnur’s ready for field work, suspicious digging, whatever you’ve got.

We’re going on an adventure.

45. Darkside – Tom Becker

China Mieville for the younger set, like, age 10ish. So there are slightly less characters with strange affects to keep track of. Slightly less. But we’re still in bizarro-London with bizarro-London old timey gangsters, in this case bounty hunters more specifically.

This is the beginning of a series and it is quite obvious based on the amount of “you have a lot to learn” sort of statements said to main character Jonathan by various persons. And the set up of the villain, who was also in charge of SIU for the police, but now is just a super-rich vampire I guess. Partially injured, probably about to be very angry at his maid. Also, like nothing is truly summed up or ended, so…the beginning of a middle grade series.

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If Belvedere can just find his way under the right stuffed animal, his can follow his little nose to any number of bizarro worlds.