The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers in exchange for an honest review.

The Caretaker is a great example of a horror story where the scale is handled right. It tells the story of Macy Mullins, a girl on the brink of bankruptcy who is struggling to support her and her sister after the death of their father. Macy gets offered a housesitting job where all she has to do is follow a peculiar set of instructions and she'll be paid a crazy amount of money. But what happens if she slips up?

I really enjoyed the general atmosphere, pacing and writing style of this book. The tone hit a good balance of being creepy but clear, and I found Macy to be a fairly interesting protagonist. Her situation was heartbreakingly believable and I never found myself confused by her actions or attitudes to what she was doing,

Having said that, the problems kind of came in the latter half of the book. Whilst the story remained compelling and well-written, I began to find Macy a bit frustrating as a character. Horror books rely on suspense and suspense is killed both by a character being too competent and by a character being too incompetent. Without giving too much away, I felt Macy's actions became very repetitive and this killed some of the believability and investment for me. I think balancing her successes vs her failures more would have kept me more on my toes and my interest going.

Overall, The Caretaker is an interesting horror book and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I did find moments of it genuinely creepy and scary, I just wish the story had changed things up a bit in the second half. I recommend checking it out if you're looking for a unique twist on 'isolation horror' but I also think this author has some room to grow and I am excited to see what they do in the future

Overall Rating:

3.5/5 stars

I Know a Place by Nat Cassidy

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and Shortwave Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

This book was off to a promising start with the opening novella but unfortunately the rest of the stories were a bit hit and miss for me. I'll go through some of my favourites and then talk about some of the ones I didn't like.

Rest Stop: This is a novella about a man who stops at a gas station to use the bathroom on a long journey and gets trapped inside. Then things get increasingly worse. I am hesitant to say too much about the plot because I was pretty gripped by the uncertainty in this one but I found it went in such a unique direction and I think it will stick with me for a long time.

Run For Your Life: A man goes back in time and replaces the Beatles. This was a super interesting and fairly detailed story. I think I would have liked this expanded into a novella as well but I really enjoyed it as it stands.

Jubilee Juncture: A failing children's entertainer begs his friend for one last chance as he shows him his new ventriloquist puppet. This was a little predictable but deliciously dark and had some interesting ideas.

Nice: A boy gets a visit from Santa's elf who begs him to be naughty this year. Another story which was a little predictable but it made up for it in creativity.

Come: What if the girl from the Ring didn't kill you in seven days but instead when you did...something else? This was actually a very intriguing premise and again, almost had novella potential.

Stories I enjoyed less: Meet Cute #1 The Unluckiest Girl (too predictable and nothing but the twist), The Art of What You Want (honestly a little transphobic almost?) and A Fruiting Body (not a short story).

Overall, the writing style was enjoyable and I am glad I read this anthology. I would read more by this author but I think I would stick to their longer stuff as they have some really good core ideas, they just needed fleshing out a little.

Overall Rating:

3.5/5

We Are Hunted by Tomi Oyemakinde

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Children's Books in exchange for an honest review.

We Are Hunted is the story of a teenager named Femi who goes to a Jurassic-Park style island with his family for a exclusive vacation. Things start to go wrong in expected and not so expected ways, and he's left trying to escape the island with his life.

I will admit, this book ended up being a lot different than I was expecting. It is listed as a horror which is not necessarily unfair, but I think sci-fi fits it much better as a label. There aren't too many horror elements apart from descriptions of violence/attacks (which are fairly gruesome), and there is more in common with traditional sci-fi stories in terms of characters and plot. The action scenes are the best written however and I thought that part of the story was handled really well.

Overall while this book ended up not really being my typical genre, I still really enjoyed reading it. I won't be seeking out anymore in the series but it was a fun one-off and I'm glad I read it.

Overall Rating:

3/5

The House Share by Kate Helm

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and Bonnier Books UK in exchange for an honest review.

The House Share tells the story of Immi and Dex, two young twenty-somethings who move into a strange but financially-enticing houseshare in London. A little like a cult and a little like university, the houseshare promotes communal living and a vested interest in helping each other as a community. And as with both a cult and university living, there is a bit of a darker side with things taking a turn for the dangerous.

The House Share is a book of two halves. For the first 60-70%, I really enjoyed it but then something odd happened. Characters started acting stupidly, one of the narrators vanishes off the page and stops being important, mental health gets emphasised in a weird way. It was so disappointing because while the writing itself was still pretty good, the plot had taken a sharp downturn. In particular, the epilogue is a real slog and suffers from having the perpetrator dramatically reflect on their crimes like a Bond villain. I also can't believe we don't get to hear again from Dex's point of view after he finds out he's innocent. That felt like such an oversight to not get his reaction at all.

The final twist of it being a psychological experiment also didn't ring true to me. Why pick those particular people if that was the case? Why is the psychology behind everything so shaky? I am not a clinical psychologist but I do have a doctorate in mental health research and the representation, while not awful, was not super accurate either.

Overall, there is still a lot to like about this book and in terms of the thriller market, this is one of the better ones. It's a shame the quality wasn't consistent throughout but I do think this author has huge potential and I would be interested if they released another thriller

Overall Rating:

.5