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

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

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

 

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

Every so often a thriller comes along that gets a ton of hype. Listen for the Lie is one of those books and I actually think that this hype is in detriment to it.

Listen for the Lie is the story of Lucy, a woman who was accused of killing her best friend 10 years ago and could never be proven innocent or guilty. She returns to her hometown at the request of her grandmother, only to discover that a podcaster is making a series about the murder. Everyone in the town thinks Lucy did it and she has very few friends as a result. She is also prone to wild fantasies of constantly murdering those around her.

In a vacuum, this book is great. It has fantastic pacing and a nice steady plot which makes it very easy to read. The characters, the mystery, the general events are all excellent. But I have some issues and almost all of them stem from things I have read about this book. Do I wish I could ignore them? Absolutely. Does the modern marketing world make this impossible? Yes.

Firstly, I've seen this book advertised as having 'an epic twist' multiple times. This is just not true. It's not that kind of thriller and doesn't need to be. It has great pacing as I mentioned and a number of interesting surprises that crop up throughout the plot, but none of them are a gut punch 'this changes everything' twist. Expecting a twist disrupted the reading experience for me and almost put me on edge, and I worry this marketing will leave a lot of people disappointed.

Secondly, this book is allegedly a dark comedy. Humour in books is so hard to pin down. There are almost no books which make me laugh out loud and I am one of those weird people who will cry-laugh at TV shows when I'm entirely alone. I honestly didn't even know this book was supposed to be funny which I think is a bad sign. Does the humour come from the fantasy murder sequences? If so, these needed to be actually elaborate escapades and not one or two lines of repetitive dialogue.

I feel like I've ragged on this book quite a bit and I want to stress, I did really enjoy it. It's a great example of how to write a thriller without a huge twist, and books of this kind honestly deserve more credit. I loved the messaging around family, and the relationships between Lucy, her parents and her grandmother. There was some thought-provoking stuff around how you can let down those around you by thinking them capable of terrible things, and that was explored from several different angles.

Overall, this book is definitely worth picking up if you enjoy thrillers. Just try to go in without the expectations pushed on by the marketing or other readers, and there's a lot to enjoy here. Tintera is a great writer and I look forward to more thrillers from her

Overall Rating:

This Little Family by Ines Bayard

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher 4th Estate in exchange for an honest review.

Occasionally you read a book that will haunt you forever. This is one of those books.

This Little Family is not really the book I expected going in and I think the blurb is actually fairly misleading. This is not really a psychological thriller or horror, except in the sense of it being a real-life horror. This is the story of Marie, a poor woman who is raped by her boss and then through a series of circumstances, forced to give birth to the child. She then goes through some of the worst postpartum depression I've ever read about, all depicted and described in heart-breaking detail.

This is not the kind of book someone 'enjoys' but I absolutely could not put it down. The writing is superb and there is a kind of car-crash fascination with the constant barrage of bad luck and psychological trauma Marie goes through. I kept reading hoping something would work out better for her, knowing from the prologue that it wouldn't. At the same time, this book is incredibly honest and sensitive in the way it portrays Marie (in my opinion at least). Nothing is gratuitous or unnecessary, and it all feels like a very real portrayal of someone's pain.

If you're looking for a reading experience that might profoundly change you as a person or a deep exploration of a truly awful situation, then this is the book for you. If you want a typical thriller with twists and turns and psychological tension, then ignore the marketing. Thankfully this book ended up appealing to me anyway, far more than most thrillers can, but I do wonder how many people will be mislead and unfairly rate the book due to the poor choice of marketing. It really does deserve better

Overall Rating:

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

 

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

I really wanted to love this book.

Plain Bad Heroines is two stories in one, one set in the past and one set in the present. In the past, we learn about the tragic and spooky histories of two lesbian women as they navigate life and supernatural wasps. In the present, we follow three teenagers involved in making a movie about a tragedy which happened at the school the women in the past ran. I feel like both these stories had potential but neither one ended up being particularly interesting.

The main issue I had with this book was the pacing. It is long and more importantly, it is longer than it feels like it should be. If this was shorter and snappier then a lot of my other issues would be sorted. It is difficult to keep track of what is happening in the past because you get long segments about it and then nothing for ages, so by the time you revisit it you're no longer sure what was going on. Meanwhile, nothing is going on in the present at all and yet we still spend hundreds of pages dwelling on that nothing. It fits thematically and the three girls are interesting enough, but because we spend so much time with them, I just found myself tuning out until the book returned to the past segments.

There were parts of this book I really enjoyed. There's a spooky scene with the wasps and a bathtub and lots of good stuff, but that's one of the only spooky scenes in the whole book. I like the idea in theory of what is happening in the present (haunted set, horror movie legend of a mother, queer stuff) but it doesn't feel like it is happening. And I did like the style of narration, again with the caveat that I would have liked it a lot more if it was more concise and didn't have time to get on my nerves.

I also got an ARC of the audiobook so I listened to that, which didn't help with the pacing but did improve my enjoyment of the narrative style and helped me keep track of the characters a little better. I do recommend the audiobook, although again the length is off-putting as most people listen slower than they read.

Overall, I sadly can't recommend this book. It had such potential but it quickly became a drag, and the moments I liked weren't enough to make the whole experience worth it. A perfect case of 'needed a good edit' and it might have been perfect.

Overall Rating:

Bad Dolls by Rachel Harrison

 

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

This is a super interesting collection of four short stories which are what I would call soft-horror. Most of these tales are on the lighter side of dark, with horror-esque subject material but a much more comedic or optimistic execution. Since there are only four stories, I'll review each of them.

Reply Hazy: A woman picks up a magic 8 ball which starts to make all of her decisions for her. This was probably the weakest story for me. It ends a little abruptly and the horror never really takes off. I wouldn't mind if the story was a bit more complete, but it falls a little flat overall.

Bachelorette: A woman attends her childhood best friend's bachelorette party and things take an ominous turn. This was a much stronger story, maybe my favourite of the bunch. The horror element ties really well thematically to the idea of outgrowing your friends and holding on desperately to old times whilst dealing with female jealousy. All the elements worked really well together.

Goblin: Desperate to lose weight before an ex's wedding, a woman downloads an app where a goblin will help her control her diet. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did but it's a solid execution of a fundamentally wacky premise. It ended quite abruptly again but with a bit more of a satisfying conclusion than the first one.

Bad Dolls: After the death of her sister, a woman becomes overly attached to a doll in her house. This is probably the closest to 'true horror' and again the horror analogy works well for the situation, even if it is a little bit obvious. This one has a good atmosphere but I think the lack of originality holds it back, even though the character and emotions within it are solid.

Overall, I really liked this story collection. It felt like 'feminist horror' and there were strong themes of womanhood and women's issues tying all four stories together. It has an interesting core concept and enough going on that I am happy to overlook the minor flaws. I would definitely recommend this if you're intrigued by any of these stories or would like to read some horror that is a little outside the box

Overall Rating:

Guilty Women by Melanie Blake

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher HarperCollins UK Audio in exchange for an honest review.

In 2021, I reviewed the first book of this series Ruthless Women and marked it down for transphobia. Well, I am pleased to report that the author does some major course correction in this one. Is it entirely perfect? No, but I have respect for someone who listens to feedback and does their best.

Guilty Women is a continuation of the previous book and is best described as a soap opera come to life which also happens to take place on the set of a soap opera. I enjoyed the fun ridiculousness of the first book and I mostly enjoyed the fun ridiculousness of this one. The melodrama is toned down considerably and this is both a blessing and a curse. The characters definitely feel more real and there is an emotionality to them that didn't fully exist in the first book. On the other hand, it's a little less fun and in fact contains some quite graphic depictions of sexual assault which was a bit jarring tone-wise.

My main issue with this book however is that there is simply too much going on. I feel that many of the storylines/plot threads were not utilised or connected fully. The best example for me was the Katherine/Lee storyline. Katherine's past lover both onscreen and off comes suddenly back, and they rekindle their romance in a very passionate and intense way. This plot takes an interesting turn but then you don't revisit it again until the very end of the book, and even then it's barely explored properly. There is a lot of interesting stuff happening throughout, it's just all a bit messily put together.

The audiobook was a particularly nice way to experience the story, so long as you don't mind listening to graphic sex scenes. It really brought the story to life and amplified that 'soap opera' feeling in a good way.

Overall, I would recommend this book if you enjoyed the first one and you want to see where the story goes. It definitely improves upon the first one in many ways, and I did enjoy seeing where the characters went and the interpersonal dramas going on. I don't know if a third book is intended but if it is, I would hope it manages to strike the balance between the fun of the first one and the heart of the second one

Overall Rating:

.5

Idol by Louise O'Neill

 

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

Idol is such a hard book to describe. On the surface, it is the story of Sam, a wellness guru who has become popular with lost, broken women. One day her world is shattered when her childhood friend accuses her of sexual assault when they were teenagers. Desperate to clear her name, she rushes to visit her and effectively tries to force them to become best friends again.

This is a complicated book. It is hard to say I enjoyed it. Sam is a deeply unlikable character (entirely intentionally) and the subject matter is equally bleak. As the story goes on, it builds into an absolute mess which is incredibly interesting but not easy to read. Having said that, I really was gripped by this book. I would say it was well-written and, although I felt like the other characters could have been developed more, Sam made for an unusual main character.

With all this praise, there are a few caveats however. The overall message of this book is...uncomfortable. It ends in a bit of an odd place and I almost wish we'd spent more time near the end of the book to truly dive into the emotions and events that were going on. Josh and Lisa were begging for more of their side to be heard, and I think that would have really added some clarity and depth to the issues being talked about here. As it stands, something is missing. It's not huge but it is there. I also think some people will struggle with what this book is saying, and I think that's a fair interpretation.

Overall, I 'liked' this book as much as you can with this kind of deliberately uncomfortable read. I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next, and it held my attention throughout. It wasn't perfect but it's definitely worth a try, particularly if you're a fan of Louise O'Neill's previous work.

Overall Rating:

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Hodder & Stoughton,  in exchange for an honest review.

Oh boy. Every so often a thriller will come along which just blows all other thrillers out of the water, and Survive the Night is just one in a long line by Riley Sager to do so.

Survive the Night is the story of Charlie, a college girl whose roommate has recently been murdered by the notorious 'Campus Killer'. Riddled with guilt and suffering periods of dissociation, she makes the rash decision one night to hitch a long ride home with a guy she meets on campus who happens to be driving her way. Faced with a long roadtrip and a potentially bad decision, they start talking and Charlie starts to wonder if maybe she has gotten into the car with precisely the person who might have killed her roommate.

This book is intense. I was worried at first that it was playing its cards too early, but of course I should have known better. Rather than being full of dramatic twists, this book gently shifts and shifts back like a rope ladder, never quite letting you feel secure. The writing is a beautiful lesson in how to create tension and a sense of dread. I read it on a journey home and it made the trip seem so quick, that's how absorbed I was.

As a protagonist, Charlie is a super interesting character. People who are tired of the whole 'mentally ill' heroine trope in thrillers might be disappointed here, but I found her an intriguing and (perhaps most importantly) sympathetic protagonist. Even as she makes stupid decisions, you can always understand her rationale, even if you don't agree with it. That's quite a hard task for a thriller author to accomplish, and it never felt like Charlie was being forced into making stupid decisions for the sake of the plot.

I can't say a whole lot more without giving stuff away, but if you're a fan of either closed space or cat and mouse thrillers, then this book is for you. It's a fast-paced, tightly woven read with plenty to keep you engaged for the ride. Definitely worth checking out this author if you haven't already!

Overall Rating:

.5

Autumnal by Daniel Kraus

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Independent Publishers Group, Vault Comics in exchange for an honest review.

It's rare for me to dislike a graphic novel but trust me when I say Autumnal truly blew me away. Focused on a single woman and her daughter, the story begins when she inherits a house from her mother and returns to her childhood home. Upon returning though, it quickly becomes apparent that something weird is happening with the leaves, and an old rhyme from her childhood might have more than a kernel of truth to it.

The atmosphere of this graphic novel is astounding. The art, the characters, the general story all come together in a wonderful way. There are strong Stephen King vibes here in terms of story and tone, but it also manages to be much more unique than that and bring an atmosphere all its own. The characterisation is so strong and this really helped drive the horror. I was so completely absorbed by the story, I read it all in one sitting and I know I will be thinking about this for a long while.

If you want a new creepy graphic novel for the spooky season, you can't go wrong here. It's perfect for getting you in the mood for Halloween, but also more generally is just a solid tale of horror. I would love to read more stuff like this and I can't wait to see what the artists/authors do next.

Overall Rating:

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

 

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

Grady Hendrix is one of those authors I know is always going to give me a good time, and The Final Girl Support Group is no exception. From the first page this book sucked me in and I loved every second of it. 

This is the tale of Lynette, a 'final girl' of the horror genre fame. For those not in the know, a final girl is the sole survivor of a horror film, usually found in 80s and 90s slashers. She is usually pure, very resourceful and innocent, and often deeply traumatised by her experiences. In this world, famous horror movies are based on true events and our 6 members of the support group are the survivors. Scream, Friday the 13th, Halloween-they are all here under different names, and now we get to see what happened to the protagonists and who they grew up to be. The plot kicks off when Lynette suspects that someone is intent on murdering them all and goes on the run, determined that this time she will survive again.

There was so much about this book that surprised and delighted me. Firstly, the fact that each final girl comes from a recognisable franchise was completely unexpected and I adored it as a horror fan. I loved trying to guess what franchise each girl came from and putting together all the references and clues. Having said that, this book is so much more than a love letter to the genre. As always, Hendrix's characters are on point here. Lynette is ruthless and not a 'good' person, but you are 100% rooting for her as a reader. I think it does a brilliant job of recreating that familiar relationship between a victim and the public. Sure, you feel sorry for her but can you trust her? Is she telling the truth? Hendrix plays on these feelings to the book's advantage and it really is so clever in its execution.

It is truly incredible to have a book like this with a plot like it does and it be one of the most feminist horror books I have ever read. Rest assured, it is not overt and can be easily ignored if you wish. But to have such a strong cast of female characters, to truly poke and prod at the trope of the 'final girl' and how it is perceived by people, to have almost no sexual content or sexualisation of the female characters in the slasher genre: all this is so impressive to me. I think it has some fantastic things to say in the conversation of gender and horror, and these are woven effortlessly into the story so it never feels preachy or like that is the only point of the book.

There's not much more I can say to praise this book without giving things away but truly, it was everything I hoped for and more. If you're wondering what the difference between Final Girls by Riley Sager and this is, they are similar in basic premise and analysis of the trope but vastly different in content and execution. I enjoyed both thoroughly and reading The Final Girl Support Group, I didn't feel like it was being unoriginal or retreading old ground. This is definitely more of a horror than a thriller and it explores a wider cast of characters and situations.

Overall, if you enjoy horror (and in particular, slashers) please read this book. It breathes fresh life into the genre and I know this is a story I will be rereading a lot for many years to come. If you try one of Hendrix's books (and you absolutely should) this is the one I recommend the most.

Overall Rating: