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.

What to expect this month

Update

Yesterday’s post was an introduction to this month’s genre, which I have titled Murder Mystery March. Every book I read this month will be ones that will hopefully scare, disgust, and disturb me. I’m also hoping that some of them might have an intriguing story or a tricky plot that constantly has me asking questions along the way. These are all books that I have purchased recently, either because I saw them in the store and liked what I read on the back cover, or else I paged through my digital list and picked out a few that I thought would fit in with the theme. I am really looking forward to my time spent in between the pages this month. Here’s to hopefully getting scared!

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Fiction

On an apocalyptic Earth, all cis men either are infected, or are on their way to becoming infected, with a virus that turns them into savage, revolting, mindless creatures that are only interested in eating, hunting, and ravaging women. Full of incredibly graphic imagery, I loved how disgusting Manhunt was. I definitely whispered the word ‘gross’ or ‘ew’ several times as I read this in the office during my lunch break, along with the occasional, ‘That’s messed up’. I would almost classify this novel as not safe for work, as there are depictions of consensual sex, rape, drug use, and a great deal of violence, which is really no ones business as no one would know any of that unless they were reading over your shoulder. However, the cover itself had me wondering a few times whether or not I should keep it hidden. I loved how the cover art made use of a slang term to give you a hint of what lies within, but I also found it humorous as I enjoy watching a certain trio of British car enthusiasts and they refer to their male parts as plums. 

This book was really real. By that I mean nothing was sugar coated. The way the author wrote this sounds exactly like I imagine things would probably be if something like this ever actually happened. There was a lot of brutality, even the few moments of peace that the characters had were blanketed in roughness. This novel was a considerable change to the type of material I have been reading lately, and it was riveting. Trans supportive and girl power themes are present throughout.

I really only had two issues with the story as a whole. Towards the end there is a scene where the wrong character’s name was used, the character in question wasn’t even in the same town, and that bothered me a lot, way more than it should. But I caught it immediately, I even went back and read the scene again to make sure I wasn’t crazy. I don’t know how the author or an editor didn’t catch it but Beth’s name was just thrown in there and the only people in that particular scene on the balcony were Fran, Viv, and Ramona, I’m not counting all the other women that were inside the building. This small mistake just ruined the continuity for me.

Spoiler warning, don’t read this next part if you intend to read the book. I wasn’t going to even mention this when I started writing, but I’m puzzled so now I do want to talk about it. At the very, very end there was a scene between Beth and Teach in which Teach calls her Branden, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Did Teach know Beth/Branden from some chance meeting in the past, and in that moment recognize her? Or was Beth/Branden her brother, which I thought maybe the author was trying to hint at seeing as Teach was thinking back on her trans brother shortly before this encounter. Beth says, ‘No’ when Teach calls Branden. Was this because she did not want to be called by her male name, that Teach somehow, miraculously, guessed, or just because she did not want to be called any male name seeing as she identified as a woman? Maybe I just missed the meaning of that entire part. 

Nocticadia by Keri Lake

Fiction

I absolutely loved this book! I am so excited that I found a dark romance standalone that has substance to go along with the smut. It had everything that I love in a story, a mystery that takes time to unravel, a fair bit of gore, science, and a little bit of drama. 

Our main lady, Lilia Vespertine, is an intelligent girl who dreams of being a doctor as she takes one or two classes a semester at a community college while she works full time and then some. Miserable, constantly exhausted, and always worried about money, Lilia thinks it will take her a decade or more before she can reach her dreams, if they are even possible at all. After a professor is very impressed over a paper she wrote, Lilia is given the opportunity to have her dreams come true, with a full scholarship for a semester at a prestigious university. She does the smart thing and leaves her very unfulfilling life behind.

The way the author describes the campus makes me wish it was real and that I was even a little bit qualified to go there. Old, gothic buildings converted into lecture halls, classrooms, and dorms, with the addition of modern structures and modern amenities, on an isolated island that also has a beautiful town. Lilia is one of the few students that is not privileged, making her feel like an imposter as she walks around campus in her second hand clothes and borrowed laptop, surrounded by young people in designer fashions that drink eight dollar coffees. She finds it hard to make friends, never really having had time for them in the past four years, but there is one person that it seems she would make all the time in the world for. That person just happens to be one of her professors, Devryck Bramwell.

He is such an immovable, cold, intelligent character, I was instantly into him. He was pretty much my ideal fictional guy, super smart, driven, with strict self imposed rules that he eventually breaks. He is not nice, and he often speaks cruelly, but when he finds something that he is passionate about he would do anything to protect it, or in this case, her. 

If you love a dark tale, with scandal and danger, and dirty, passionate scenes, you will really enjoy this book. I see myself reading this again in the very near future. I almost wish it wasn’t a standalone, I would love to see more of the characters, but the author has said she would not be writing any additional books about Lilia and Devryck. I kind of hope that she changes her mind.