Category: Fiction

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

Fiction

I have been having a hard time getting through the last psychology book I had planned to end the month with, surprise surprise. So, I kind of got a little side tracked and began my summer of fun reads a little early. I started with a standalone fantasy novel that takes place in a world where humans, vampires, and werewolves all live together, but not harmoniously.

For hundreds of years, there have been feuds, kidnappings, and murders between vampires and weres, weres are humans, and humans and vampires. All three species hold grudges, most everyone believes in the common stereotypes, even when they are told otherwise, and no one ever seems to be able to hold to a truce for very long. One such attempt at keeping the peace over the years has been the exchange of a collateral, in which a family member of one species is traded with the family member of another and forced to live amongst them for ten years. In a further attempt to try to force peace, this time, a vampire female is traded to an Alpha werewolf, not just as collateral, but as his bride. The female in question, named Misery, is an unusual and surprising choice, but I won’t tell you why. 

I enjoyed this because it was classic monsters but with a modern twist. Not all the standard characteristics you would expect to be true of vampires and werewolves are true here. You do get some of the usuals, such as blood drinking and shapeshifting, but some of the other things you would expect these creatures to do are left out. I liked that there were multiple mysteries that were going on at the same time, it kept the plot interesting. I needed that interesting plot because the romance didn’t even start until about mid book, this being the reason I got the book in the first place. However, the scenes I read were worth the wait because I definitely see a re-read in my future. 

Even though I wanted a standalone as opposed to an entire series, I was left wanting more. Like a novel I read a few months ago, Nocticadia, the end left it open to a future novel if the author decides in the future that she would like to write more about these characters. I don’t believe that I could possibly be the only one who feels this way. 

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

Fiction

This was an interesting one. A short piece of fiction, it features a girl who is on a trip with her parents, a professor, and some students, on a two week summer experience living as ancient Britons. Silvie’s dad is obsessed with the lives of people who lived thousands of years ago, but she is nowhere near as enthusiastic. She and her mother are forced to go along with him on annual trips where they camp, eat, sleep, and dress like their ancestors would. The deeper you get into the story, the more you realize that there is something wrong with the obsessions of this tyrant of a man who loves to control every aspect of his wife and daughters lives almost as he loves living and learning about the lives of ancient man. 

There are a few triggers in this book, those being verbal and physical abuse, bodily harm, sexuality, and poverty. They are by no means very extreme in my opinion, but those who are sensitive to those topics might get upset or uncomfortable reading some of the passages. 

Besides wanting to mention the triggers, I wanted to talk about the unique writing style. I’m trying to think of another book I have read that is written in this way, I think Tropic of Cancer might be one. There are no quotation marks used or new paragraphs created when a different character speaks. The words and conversation just flows continuously, and I was kind of surprised that I found myself actually liking it. It did mean slowing down my reading a little bit so that I could make sure I was reading from the correct characters perspective in my head. I know I am not the only one who creates voices for different characters in their head that they switch to when reading from that person’s point of view. Or am I? 

Additionally, I wanted to mention the artwork. The cover is beautiful, I love the plants and the picture they make and the use of only the single bright green color. There is also some chapter art within the book that is very nice to look at. It’s a very small book, but it is so lovely. 

So, to conclude, I liked this story a great deal. This is a great weekend book, you can probably even finish it in one sitting. If you need an easy book to get back into reading, or if you need a break from long books, I’d say try this one out.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

Fiction

I watched the film adaptation of this novel many years ago, well before I knew that it was taken from a book. I actually only very recently found out that Perfume was a novel when I saw it during one of my book store wanderings. Even though I’ve only seen the movie once I remember it well because the story was so interesting, and the fact that Alan Rickman was in it was also a contributing factor. I was hoping that my experience reading the book would leave me just as stricken as I felt after watching the movie. Hope can only go so far, as I wouldn’t say that the book had as much of an impact on me as the film did. But I will say that the actors, writers, and director, did a great job at sticking pretty closely to the story. And as for reading the story, it made me want to watch the movie again.

The tale is about a man who is born with an incredible sense of smell. He can smell things that no other human, and perhaps even animals with the most sensitive olfactories, can detect. He truly lives to smell, nothing else in life brings him joy but the pursuit of new scents. For many years during his youth, he walks blindly through the streets of Paris, using his sense of smell to guide the way, as he tries to discover every smell that exists. As he enters adulthood, he leaves Paris, entering a very strange period of his life during which he makes an incredible revelation. I was honestly surprised that it took him as long as it did to have this realization. Having made this startling discovery, his life’s purpose goes from sniffing out scents to learning how to make them. 

I would recommend both the book and the movie to anyone who loves bizarre stories. I can see why the author is a bestseller, especially if his other books are just as good.

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

Fiction

I’m going to call it now and say that this is the best book I have read this month. I was as entranced as I get when I’m reading a fantasy novel, I kept looking forward to all the free moments I would have in my day so that I could read more. I have been classifying a lot of the fiction books I have been reading lately as ones I would not read again. It was making me feel disappointed in the genre as a whole. This one, however, is going to be a repeat read in my future. 

We get two first person points of view, one from first semester college student Carly, and one from English professor, Dr. Scarlett Clark. The two women couldn’t be more different, Carly being shy, reserved, and unsure, Scarlett meanwhile being confident, ambitious, and masterful. You wonder if they are going to cross paths, since they are both at the same college, but what the circumstances might be to land them in the same place, different as they are. Scarlett intrigued me from the very beginning, I love a villainous female lead, and an intelligent one at that. Her purpose in life is a mission that I would classify as lawful evil, what she is doing is wrong by the majority of civilized societies standards, but she has her reasons for why she chooses to deliver her form of justice. And I can’t say that I disagree with her reasons. 

I don’t want to get too much more into it, I don’t want to ruin the plot for you because it is very good. It gets messy for a while, you are constantly on edge wondering if her secret is going to be discovered, it’s part of the reason why I couldn’t wait to read it every day. I will say this though, world’s do collide at some point but not in the way I expected at all and I think you might be surprised too. I highly recommend it!

The Handyman Method by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan

Fiction

This book was very bizarre, and it got more so the deeper I delved into it. I was desperately trying to figure out what was going on with the dad for the first few chapters. Was he actually going crazy? Was he imagining things due to the trauma of an incident, or was he just genetically predisposed to have mental health issues that were now starting to manifest? Or, were the voices and images actually real? 

I was leaning towards ghosts or a haunting of some kind, especially when things started going on with the son too. Once the little boy started to see weird things I thought that this would be the extent of the troubles with this family, but then things started going on with the mother as well. It turned out that she was why all this strangeness was happening but I still couldn’t figure out why, I couldn’t figure out her motive. Her point of view chapters are when things started to make a little bit sense, the mystery started to unravel with her monologues. She didn’t outright say what was going on until much later, but she gives you enough of a hint in those earlier chapters to begin to figure it out. 

Besides the hearing of voices, seeing strange things, and mental instability, there is a lot of gross imagery to go along with this story. You’ll read through descriptions of creepy dolls and figures, bugs, slime and mold, squirming rodents, and bodily disfigurement. There is a lot of verbiage in this story that is so good at making you picture what is going on that you might curl your lip in disgust. The scare factor was good, but the disgusting factor was better.