Tag: Ghost

Love At First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi

Fiction

I have never truly done spooky reads in the month of October, but this year I wanted to start making that a new tradition for myself. If you frequent my blog you will see that I did get a bit sidetracked this month, but I finally got around to reading a book that was on theme for the month. I don’t know if this genre is a large one, or if it even exists, but I am going to say that this book falls in the cozy, spooky, romance category. 

Rosemary can see and interact with ghosts, the gift runs in her family. Not many people know, just those closest to her, and her ability doesn’t have much of an effect on her daily life. Rosemary has become a successful writer, one of her books was picked up by a production studio and is being made into a movie. She agrees to go to England at the request of the production company so they can pick her brain while filming, but she mostly goes because she believes that the lead role has been miscast and she wants to see if there is anything she can do to change the director’s mind. Ellis, a world famous movie star, has a resume full of starring roles in action flicks, and personal life to match. Rosemary doesn’t think that the tall, tan, and handsome Ellis will be able to convincingly play the thin and reserved male character from her story. Rosemary’s ability to see ghosts does come into play later in the book.

I was anticipating the spice to be spicier since a major plot point is Rosemary going on and on about how badly she wants a man to dominate her. Ellis is honestly a very respectful and playful dom, which I appreciated. But with the way Rosemary reminisced about her disappointing doms of the past I was expecting the intimate moments between them to go a little bit harder, a lot harder actually. It was mostly verbal domination, making her follow his orders, and not so much the hardcore physical domination that I feel like most people would associate with the word. In other words, I feel like I was a little bit misled. I expected fire and I got an electric blanket that was on the lowest setting. 

So the book ended up being a cozy ghost story with romance on the side. I would read it again, it was pleasant enough. But now that I know that it is a little bit vanilla in the spice department I will only reach for it when I am in the mood for something that is lower in intensity. I would say that this is a good book for someone who is curious about the romance genre, I would call it introductory level in regards to spice. 

Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories

Fiction

I was very intrigued when I saw this book, because I love Roald Dahl’s stories, James and the Giant Peach and Matilda most of all. I had never read a ghost story composed by him, and I was slightly disappointed in reading the introduction to find out that the stories within were not ones he had written. The collection is the result of research, consisting of the reading of hundreds of short stories, and these few he deemed scary enough to be made into episodes for a potential television show. The show never happened, but Dahl wanted the stories to reach others. 

I’m sure in another time, like, when the book was first published, these stories would have been a little bit scary. But they are from another time even more distant than that. None of the stories in this collection scared me. I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this when it was first published in 1983 would have been frightened by any of the tales. I think it more likely that the stories in this book would have scared someone reading it when I imagine a lot of them were originally written, which I am guessing is around the end of the 19th century. 

So all I can say about this collection of scary stories is that it is a great example of how the bar moves with time. What was once guaranteed to frighten people over a hundred years ago would probably not even make a person gasp in the slightest now. This could just be me, I think I do have a very liberal opinion of what constitutes being scary, but how could I not when I was literally brought up watching Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Poltergeist. The only way to judge for yourself would be to read this Book of Ghost Stories.