Books Read in 2021: Four-Star Fantasy

 It's been a bit of a miserable week-end within the bounds of my body and mind. On the plus side, I did get a brief respite from my January headache, and I thought the Gabapentin headache prophylaxis might be kicking in. Then an absolute destroying angel of a migraine came in like a wrecking ball on Friday (the temperature see-sawing between -6 and -26 sure the fuck isn't helping) and comes roaring back every time my migraine pill protection wanes. Add to that the danger of rage stroking out every time I read some new atrocity committed by the so-called Freedom Convoy - harassing teenaged fast-food workers! Defacing the Terry Fox statue! Dancing on the war memorial! Impeding the movement of ambulances! Honking all night outside the homes of people trying to sleep! Threatening the staff at the Sheperds of Good Hope HOMELESS SHELTER into giving them free food, even though they've raised 6 millions dollars through GoFundMe! They've mostly been gridlocking downtown, but they drove by on the main road just one house away from mine Friday night for over an hour, and it was not a good feeling. Neither is seeing how many Canadians support them. 

But I had to get on my computer to file a job application, and this post was almost ready to go, so, onward. 

Four-Star Fantasy

Light From Other Stars by Erika Swyler: Synopsis from Goodreads: Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach—if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda’s newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time. Amidst the chaos that erupts, Nedda must confront her father and his secrets, the ramifications of which will irrevocably change her life, her community, and the entire world. But she finds an unexpected ally in Betheen, the mother she’s never quite understood, who surprises Nedda by seeing her more clearly than anyone else. Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream, and as she floats in antigravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her. Light from Other Stars is about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the cost of meaningful work. It questions how our lives have changed, what progress looks like, and what it really means to sacrifice for the greater good.

"'Little Twitch, you’re going to be fine, and so will I. What did I say we all become? Gas and carbon. Heat and light. I’ll be in the air, I’ll be in the ground, I’ll always be with you.’ ‘That’s stupid,’ she shouted, then wished she hadn’t. Those might be the last words he’d hear her say. But it was stupid. ‘It’s not,’ he said. ‘You were with me even before you were born. Everything that would make you was already here, waiting to be you. It’ll be like that, I promise. It’ll be like I’m waiting for you.’”

I adored this book, but I think it requires time to read all the way through, so I wouldn't argue with anyone who thinks it was a great concept that lacked in execution. My usual method is to read several books at once, of difference genres and levels of attention requirement, and that didn't work for this book. When I put down everything else and paid full attention, it imprinted itself like an enormous, heartwrenching, bittersweet watermark on my soul. It's about a father whose misguided grief and love for his children externalized in a world-shattering act. It's about how we travel as far as we possibly can, sometimes in an effort to understand where we came from. It's about many different kinds of love and grief and yearning. On the one hand, I agree it's not fair to say that if a book didn't work for you you just didn't read it properly. On the other hand, some books do reward close, careful reading. This is a definite buy to own and reread for me. 

Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5) by Seanan McGuire: Synopsis from Goodreads: Jack left Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister—whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice—back to their home on the Moors. But death in their adopted world isn't always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome. Eleanor West's "No Quests" rule is about to be broken.

This is a sequel within the series to my very favourite of the WayWard Children series, Down 
Among the Sticks and Bones. Nothing has topped that one yet, but this has the same robust worldbuilding, wonderful characters and dedication to this magical world where the rules aren't the same as for in the mundane realm, but they're just as unforgiving. 

She Has a Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be by J.D. Barker: Synopsis from Goodreads: A haunting tale of suspense, rendered with the masterful skill only Barker could muster. After the loss of his parents, young Jack Thatch first met Stella as a child—this cryptic little girl of eight with dark hair and darker eyes, sitting alone on a bench in the cemetery clutching her favorite book. Gone moments later, the brief encounter would spark an obsession. She'd creep into his thoughts, his every waking moment, until he finally finds her again exactly one year later, sitting upon the same bench, only to disappear again soon after. The body of a man found in an alley, every inch of his flesh horribly burned, yet his clothing completely untouched. For Detective Faustino Brier, this wasn't the first, and he knew it wouldn't be the last. It was no different from the others. He'd find another just like it one year from today. August 9, to be exact. Isolated and locked away from the world in a shadowy lab, a little boy known only as Subject "D" waits, grows, learns. He's permitted to speak to no one. He has never known the touch of another. Harboring a power so horrific, those in control will never allow him beyond their walls. All of them linked in ways unimaginable.

I read a mystery/serial killer novel by this author before this one, and based on that small sampling, I would really prefer he stick with this genre, whatever it is. The title is kind of awkward and wacky, but I kind of love it - beats the hell out of another book called "The Shadow of Darkness" or "Murder on the Whatever". There are multiple books titled "Shattered Reality", what's THAT all about? Anyway. I searched exhaustively (for, like, five whole minutes) to see if the title was an actual quote from Great Expectations, because that would be really cool, but I couldn't confirm it. The Great Expectations allusion doesn't really hold up that much beyond the names, honestly, but the story was still engaging and quite inventive. The early parts about young Jack have a strong flavour of Stephen King (I mean this in a good way), and there is a surprisingly affecting possibly-doomed love story that develops. The back story and Jack's web of relationships is rendered carefully and vividly enough that you really care by the time the what-the-hell stuff starts flying. Really fun ride.

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots: Synopsis from Goodreads: Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy?  As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured.  And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off. 

With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks. Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing.  And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance. It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world. A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

-”A few cabbies, though, decided that being able to double their rates was worth the threat of getting their car ripped in half by some costumed dirtbag.”

-”Eventually, Greg couldn’t ignore the constant muted buzzing in his pocket that meant someone’s weapon of mass destruction wasn’t booting up the way it was supposed to, and he fled the room to take the call.”

A Canada Read nominee for last year. Holy crap, this was a ride. Billed as "The Boys meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation" (I've watched some of the former and yes, that definitely tracks, hated the latter and don't get the comparison at all). It's about people who work as henchmen (henchpeople?) for villains in a world where actual superheros exist. I had a few qualms early on in the book, just because I'm - not a total goody two-shoes, exactly, but sort of a rule-follower and unwilling to throw my loyalty in with a 'villain'. But the book makes a pretty good case for the fact that in this kind of world, 'heroes' are as dangerous to the common person as villains. It's really interesting reading about the moral and strategic quandaries in this universe. Besides that it's just a fast-paced, really fascinating read where you basically just hold on tight and see where it takes you. I didn't love the ending - are super-abrupt endings a new thing? The thing of the moment? The flash in the pan? The new kid on the block? Why can't I stop? -but I loved everything else.

House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland: Synopsis from Goodreads: Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats. Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind. As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children. The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.

It became quite apparent where this was going fairly early on, but the journey was still enjoyable. Most of all I respected the author's willingness to be gross. This is a Grimm fairy tale, not a Disney version. Things rot and bleed and mold, which gives the whole thing a much more visceral and engaging air. The dynamic between the mother and the daughters, the sisters and the boyfriend of the oldest is devoid of easy sentiment. I liked it.

The Bear and the Nightingale (The Winternight Trilogy #1) by Katherine Arden: Synopsis from Goodreads: At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil. After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows. And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent. As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales. The Bear and the Nightingale is a magical debut novel from a gifted and gorgeous voice. It spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent.

I read another book by this author and loved it, and then I struggled for a bit for the first third or so. I liked the worldbuilding and Vasya is a wonderful character, and I felt the sense of menace, but when I put the book down I didn't have a strong urge to pick it up again. I got caught up more as the book went on, and it was a wonderful story - a realistic portrayal of grueling day-to-day farming life during a bitter Russian winter with magical realism overtones.

The Future is Yours by Dan Frey: Synopsis from Goodreads: Two best friends create a computer that can predict the future. But what they can’t predict is how it will tear their friendship—and society—apart. If you had the chance to look one year into the future, would you? For Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry, the answer is unequivocally yes. And they’re betting everything that you’ll say yes, too. Welcome to The Future: a computer that connects to the internet one year from now, so you can see who you’ll be dating, where you’ll be working, even whether or not you’ll be alive in the year to come. By forming a startup to deliver this revolutionary technology to the world, Ben and Adhi have made their wildest, most impossible dream a reality. Once Silicon Valley outsiders, they’re now its hottest commodity. The device can predict everything perfectly—from stock market spikes and sports scores to political scandals and corporate takeovers—allowing them to chase down success and fame while staying one step ahead of the competition. But the future their device foretells is not the bright one they imagined. Ambition. Greed. Jealousy. And, perhaps, an apocalypse. The question is . . . can they stop it? Told through emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, this bleeding-edge tech thriller chronicles the costs of innovation and asks how far you’d go to protect the ones you love—even from themselves.

-”So it is Arjuna’s burden to fight, and drown the battlefield in blood, Even when he knows better. Most scholars see his dilemma in terms of destiny, but I would call it the curse of enlightenment -- seeing the futility and meaninglessness of it all, but still gripped with the need to win. Still desperate to prove his mettle. Still attached, by the bonds of human connection, to his army.”

This was more of a rapid read than I expected. I liked the sort-of epistolary story-telling (emails and newspaper articles and texts) and the fact that the emphasis was on how this technology would affect the people who created it - irresistible temptation, possible self-fulfilling prophecies. All of the characters were pretty heavily flawed, which also made the story more believable - I don't think there are many angels involved in venture capital and groundbreaking tech. The slippery slope of rationalizing, self-justifying and rule-breaking is all-too-believable. It touched on it all with a deceptive lightness, creating a quickening spiral of destruction.

Sleeping Giants (The Themis Files #1) by Sylvain Neuvel: Synopsis from Goodreads: A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand. Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved - the object's origins, architects, and purpose unknown.  But some can never stop searching for answers. Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand's code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the relic they seek. What's clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unravelling history's most perplexing discovery-and finally figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

-”’But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realistis are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.’”

I find this kind of style - not quite epistolary, but written as a series of interviews, brief journal entries and news articles - interesting, because it can go a number of ways. Sometimes it makes it harder to really get a read on the characters, sometimes it makes things feel a bit rushed. When it's done well, as it is here, it reveals how some writers can really admirably capture the essence of characters and demonstrate profound insights with this kind of brevity. It creates an atmosphere of slight menace and foreboding as well. This is a skillful exploration of the challenges of weighing scientific exploration against the limits of humanity - what are we willing to trade for immense knowledge and power? As individuals? As nations? As a species? It's also just a really great story, with touches of fairly bleak humour. I was bitter that I had to wait for the next book for a few weeks from the library, but really glad I didn't start reading before the trilogy was finished. Wait, is it a trilogy? Yes, looks like it is. Whew.

The Waking Gods (The Themis Files #2) by Sylvain Neuvel: Synopsis from Goodreads: As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she’s dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers—and even more perplexing questions. But the truth is closer than ever before when a second robot, more massive than the first, materializes and lashes out with deadly force. Now humankind faces a nightmare invasion scenario made real, as more colossal machines touch down across the globe. But Rose and her team at the Earth Defense Corps refuse to surrender. They can turn the tide if they can unlock the last secrets of an advanced alien technology. The greatest weapon humanity wields is knowledge in a do-or-die battle to inherit the Earth . . . and maybe even the stars.

"I may believe in God, but I’m at war with Him. I’m a scientist. I try to answer questions, one at a time, so there’s a little less room for Him as the answer.”

And then this one took a hell of a dark turn and kind of scared me off going straight to the third. It was still good, I was just in the wrong headspace to continue immediately. 

 Witchmark (The Kingston Cycle #1) by C.L. Polk: Synopsis from Goodreads: C. L. Polk arrives on the scene with Witchmark, a stunning, addictive fantasy that combines intrigue, magic, betrayal, and romance. In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own. Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be enslaved to his family's interest or to be committed to a witches' asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn’t leave his past behind. The war between Aeland and Laneer leaves men changed, strangers to their friends and family, but even after faking his own death and reinventing himself as a doctor at a cash-strapped veterans' hospital, Miles can’t hide what he truly is. When a fatally poisoned patient exposes Miles’ healing gift and his witchmark, he must put his anonymity and freedom at risk to investigate his patient’s murder. To find the truth he’ll need to rely on the family he despises, and on the kindness of the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen.

This isn't really usual vibe - more historical fiction with magic. But the worldbuilding was really impressive, particularly the use of magic as amplifying the problems of the class system. 

 The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry:Synopsis from Goodreads: From the critically acclaimed author of Jennifer Government and Lexicon comes mind-bending speculative psychological suspense about a serial killer pursuing his victim across time and space, and the woman who is determined to stop him, even if it upends her own reality. I love you. In every world.  Young real estate agent Madison May is shocked when a client at an open house says these words to her. The man, a stranger, seems to know far too much about her, and professes his love--shortly before he murders her. Felicity Staples hates reporting on murders. As a journalist for a midsize New York City paper, she knows she must take on the assignment to research Madison May's shocking murder, but the crime seems random and the suspect is in the wind. That is, until Felicity spots the killer on the subway, right before he vanishes. Soon, Felicity senses her entire universe has shifted. No one remembers Madison May, or Felicity's encounter with the mysterious man. And her cat is missing. Felicity realizes that in her pursuit of Madison's killer, she followed him into a different dimension--one where everything about her existence is slightly altered. At first, she is determined to return to the reality she knows, but when Madison May--in this world, a struggling actress--is murdered again, Felicity decides she must find the killer--and learns that she is not the only one hunting him. Traveling through different realities, Felicity uncovers the opportunity--and danger--of living more than one life.

I went lighter on time travel this year, but still fit in a couple of parallel-worlds frolics. Aside from the murders revolving around the exhausting, all-too-realistic trope of the man who can't have a woman so kills her instead, this was a frothier example - no hard sci-fi, no excessive lingering over what it all means. But it was engaging and had great narrative energy and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  

Books Read in 2021: Four-Star Horror

I talked to Eve last night after Matt went a few rounds with her and her calculus homework. She was feeling overwhelmed with in-person classes starting next week and I had just given a prime pep talk the day before and it was late and I didn't do my best work. Today she called and she was excited about a biology lecture on Cystic Fibrosis tomorrow, and they had a really cool guest speaker in Indigenous Studies and calculus still sucks but in a funny, dramatic kind of way ("you have to understand, trig identities were, like, the absolute hellishly worst thing in grade 12 calculus, and integrals are this terrible, absolutely alien concept, and now THEY'VE PUT TRIG IDENTITIES INTO INTEGRALS, they might as well just write 'Fuck you Eve Adams' under every problem"), and basically I am back to when the kids were babies and I thought every bad day meant that everything would be bad forever. Do I never learn? It's possible that I never learn. 

Someone recommended Only Murders in the Building, which I had heard about but then forgotten, and I appreciate the reminder because we are presently watching the first part of Season 4 of Ozark because we watched the first three together and it's not the easiest thing to find a show we both want to watch. And it's a brilliant show but when I mentioned in December that season 4 was coming out Matt said "oh good, I've been way too happy lately, this'll take care of that". Did I mention that I'm prone to depression in January? This story is an hour-long study in people being shitty to each other, people who think of themselves as good making horrible, destructive choices, parents and children being alienated from each other - brilliantly! With subtlety and intelligence and poignancy! We should have waited until the spring to watch it!

Four-Star Horror

Lakewood by Megan Giddings: Synopsis from Goodreads: A startling debut about class and race, Lakewood evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation—part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. When Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of the family debt is revealed, the black millennial drops out of college to support her family and takes a job in the mysterious and remote town of Lakewood, Michigan. On paper, her new job is too good to be true. High paying. No out of pocket medical expenses. A free place to live. All Lena has to do is participate in a secret program—and lie to her friends and family about the research being done in Lakewood. An eye drop that makes brown eyes blue, a medication that could be a cure for dementia, golden pills promised to make all bad thoughts go away. The discoveries made in Lakewood, Lena is told, will change the world—but the consequences for the subjects involved could be devastating. As the truths of the program reveal themselves, Lena learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the sake of her family. Provocative and thrilling, Lakewood

 is a breathtaking novel that takes an unflinching look at the moral dilemmas many working-class families face, and the horror that has been forced on black bodies in the name of science.

I feel like some areas of injustice - here, the medical mistreatment and exploitation of black people - lend themselves exceedingly well to the horror genre. Reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, my eyebrows went so high they almost exited my face - the way minorities are treated by the white patriarchal establishment reads like nothing short of science fiction or horror. The plot here is a little more hazy and unfinished than I usually like, but it works with the subject matter. 

Thin Air: A Ghost Story by Michelle Paver: Synopsis from Goodreads: The Himalayas, 1935 Kangchenjunga. Third highest peak on earth. Greatest killer of them all. Five Englishmen set off from Darjeeling, determined to tackle the sacred summit. But courage can only take them so far - and the mountain is not their only foe. As mountain sickness and the horrors of extreme altitude set in, the past refuses to stay buried. And sometimes, the truth won't set you free.

Mountain climbing is also a subject that lends itself well to horror - the extreme testing of physical and mental resources, the isolation and loneliness that turns easily to paranoia. I borrowed this book and the one below from the library right after I vowed to myself that I was going to branch out in my reading and get away from horror for a bit - then promptly ended up with two horror books about mountain climbing, with MOUNTAINS ON THE COVER. Epic fail. Sibling rivalry and classism were also in the mix here, and it was deliciously creepy.

The White Road by Sarah Lotz: Synopsis from Goodreads: A cutting-edge thriller about one man's quest to discover horror lurking at the top of the world. Desperate to attract subscribers to his fledgling website, 'Journey to the Dark Side', ex-adrenalin junkie and slacker Simon Newman hires someone to guide him through the notorious Cwm Pot caves, so that he can film the journey and put it on the internet. With a tragic history, Cwm Pot has been off-limits for decades, and unfortunately for Simon, the guide he's hired is as unpredictable and dangerous as the watery caverns that lurk beneath the earth. After a brutal struggle for survival, Simon barely escapes with his life, but predictably, the gruesome footage he managed to collect down in the earth's bowels goes viral. Ignoring the warning signs of mental trauma, and eager to capitalize on his new internet fame, Simon latches onto another escapade that has that magic click-bait mix of danger and death - a trip to Everest. But up above 8000 feet, in the infamous Death Zone, he'll need more than his dubious morals and wits to guide him, especially when he uncovers the truth behind a decade-old tragedy - a truth that means he might not be coming back alive. A truth that will change him - and anyone who views the footage he captures - forever. 

Caving AND mountain climbing - I am even more claustrophobic than I am afraid of heights. Sarah Lotz has been an interesting writer - I've read three of her books and they are all good and very different from each other. As well as man vs nature here, there are questions about exploitive journalism, and the public's insatiable need for increasingly sensational clickbait. 

Later by Stephen King: Synopsis from Goodreads: SOMETIMES GROWING UP MEANS FACING YOUR DEMONS The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave. LATER is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King's classic novel It, LATER is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears.

This is classic Stephen King, including his remarkable ability to capture what it's like to be a child - vulnerable, at the mercy of adult whims and cruelties, horribly exposed. Jamie is an amazing character, and this was a thumping good read. 

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell: Synopsis from Goodreads: When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting . . . When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, her new servants resentful, and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure —a silent companion —-that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself. The residents of The Bridge are terrified of the figure, but Elsie tries to shrug this off as simple superstition--that is, until she notices the figure's eyes following her. A Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, this is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect--much like the silent companions themselves. 

This is more Gothic than I usually go, but it was properly frightening and unsettling. The older story shows the way witch-hysteria combined with class and race prejudice. The newer plotline combines a ghost story with family trauma so deep that it marks the actual structure of the house. 

The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell: Synopsis from Goodreads: As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another... Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business? Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them. But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back.

Offers a vivid sense of place (don't Google 'phossy jaw' if you want to sleep tonight) as well as an emotionally affecting scary story. 

Come Closer by Sara Gran: Synopsis from Goodreads: If everything in Amanda's life is so perfect, then why the mood swings, the obscene thoughts, the urge to harm the people she loves? What are those tapping sounds in the walls? And who's that woman following her? The mystery behind what's happening to Amanda in Come Closer is so frightening that it "ought to carry a warning to...readers."

Holy crap, this was one of the best examples of psychological horror I have ever read. Much of the action takes place inside Amanda's head, which does not lessen the impact at all. I will definitely be rereading this. 

The Night Vanishing (Hell Inc. #5) by Dick Wybrow: Synopsis from Goodreads: Painter Mann has spent his afterlife in the InBetween helping other ghosts move on to whatever's next. Eventually, he'll want to make that leap too, but to do that, he'll need to discover the name of the person who murdered him. Painter, the world's only dead private investigator, goes to New Orleans hoping to learn the identity of his killer. Instead, he gets wrapped up in a case where he must find and rescue hundreds of missing ghosts. To do that, he'll have to tangle with two-headed monsters, a psychotic dead DJ, enemies with supernatural powers, and the mysterious Voodoo Cher.He's also being hunted by the Ghost Wranglers, a popular cable TV show determined to prove the existence of the ghost PI known as Painter Mann.

So the last two NetGalley books I've read have really hit it out of the park. I realized soon after I started reading that this was the second in a series, but decided to finish this and then go back to the first. I really love horror books that have genuinely scary moments but also have great personal relationships and a lot of humour, which describes this book extremely well. Painter Mann is a great character and the world-making of the In Between is stellar. The Ghost Wranglers reminded me of the Amazon series Truth Seekers, and the alternating viewpoints gave the whole thing a nice tension and variation in tone. The writing isn't show-offy, but pitched perfectly to serve the story. Hugely enjoyable.

Rawblood by Catriona Ward: Synopsis from Goodreads: For generations they have died young. Now Iris and her father are the last of the Villarca line. Their disease confines them to their lonely mansion on Dartmoor; their disease means they must die alone. But Iris breaks her promise to hide from the world. She dares to fall in love.And only then do they discover the true horror of the Vallarca curse. 

Another Gothic entry - see, I DID branch out! Early 20th century, southwest of England, a family curse, doomed love affairs, horrific scenes of asylums... The story ventures here and there both in time and place, with a gathering sense of doom and melancholy. Had echoes of Wuthering Heights. I borrowed this thinking it was by another Catriona, and the fact that it is a debut novel frankly stuns me. Definitely a writer I will follow. 

Furnace by Muriel Gray: Synopsis from Goodreads: Josh Spiller is a long-distance truck driver. Although his girlfriend is pregnant, he's got no major personal problems--until the day he rolls into a small town called Furnace, where a middle-aged woman pushes a baby carriage straight into his wheels and then vanishes. The dead baby's teenage mother and other passers-by swear the wind caused the carriage to roll, and the police take Josh for a troublemaker when he insists on writing a statement to the contrary. Shaken, Josh hits the road again, only to find that it's not so easy to get away from Furnace; something inhuman is hot on his heels. A pretty hitchhiker recognizes a mysterious scrap of writing in his truck as ancient runes spelling out--on human skin--a horrific curse. From then on, all roads lead back to Furnace as Josh races to unscramble a weird puzzle involving a wealthy town councilor, the Philosopher's Stone, and a demon who will destroy Josh in three days unless he returns the runes to their rightful place.

Some of this was too dark even for me. It was definitely scary, though. I enjoyed the parts about the truck driving life and culture, and the plotting was excellent - I was completely surprised by the ending, which I seldom am. 

, The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher: A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel.Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become.

Under the Blade by Matt Serafini: Synopsis from Goodreads: Some campfire stories are real. It’s been twenty-five years since Cyrus Hoyt’s infamous killing spree at Camp Forest Grove. A quarter-century since teenage counsellor Melanie Holden left him mortally wounded and escaped with her life. Today, Melanie’s teaching career has bottomed out and left her with no choice but to return to the scene of the crime. Motivated by a lucrative publishing offer, as well as a desire to free herself from recurring nightmares, Melanie’s research into the murderer’s life brings resistance from all directions as she uncovers skeletons in Forest Grove’s past. Because of Melanie, a long-held secret is about to be revealed—one that somebody is willing to kill for in order to protect. And Melanie is going to discover she has a lot more to lose than just her mind. The stalk-and-slash suspense of Friday the 13th meets the small town mystery of Sharp Objects in this white-knuckle horror story of a final girl’s revenge.

I only learned about the concept of the 'final girl' - the last girl alive to confront the killer, usually a virgin - a few years ago, and I've been obsessively reading any book dealing with the concept since. I am currently reading a feminist theory book that explores how patriarchy and feminism play out in horror films, and it really resonates with me that a lot of women watch for the final girl, for whatever trick or method she uses to survive, as much as it might strain credulity. This was a glorious, messy B-movie of a book (with better characterization), and I loved it.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix: Synopsis from Goodreads: A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her? Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized--someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece. But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

I've found Grady Hendrix an interesting writer - the books are not horror for horror's sake, although they are plenty scary. This is probably my favourite 'final girl' book so far - twisty, dark, lavishly entertaining. 

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones: Synopsis from Goodreads: In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for. Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges… a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.

Stephen Graham Jones is a fantastic writer who I can only recommend to a select group of people. On the one hand, it is outstanding for me personally that someone who writes this masterfully writes chiefly in the horror genre. On the other hand, it's a goddamned shame that people who don't read horror won't read him. He is a Blackfoot Indigenous American who brilliantly interweaves themes of discrimination and injustice towards Indigenous people with potent and imaginative plotlines. The characters are always ones you care about, and the fear is always that they have the odds stacked against them, not just because they're in a horror novel but because of their heritage. I always come away sad, wrung out, and dazzled by his gift.

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones: Synopsis from Goodreads: Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both?

"So Shanna got a new job at the movie theater, we thought we'd play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead and I'm really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all". How's that for a first line? This is my second SGJ book of last year, but not my last. I'm not even sure it should be called horror, but, yeah, never mind, a lot of people die, it's horror. But it's much more than that. It's a bittersweet skewed coming-of-age, a maelstrom of the doubt and fear and longing that is adolescence, and maybe a giant evil mannequin that kills all your friends, but you know, chances you were all going to go away to university and lose touch anyway, really, who's to say? 

Books Read in 2021: Four-Star Mystery

So we have this to look forward to in Ottawa this week-end. I have no idea how it's actually going to shake out - I mean, I feel like they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer showing up to protest government rules when there's no one in Parliament, but they have big fucking trucks and I have concerns about them blocking emergency vehicles and bringing the downtown to a standstill - mostly because a lot of them have said that's exactly what they want to do. I live solidly in suburbia and the likelihood is that the most it will amount to for me is inconvenience. But I feel a towering rage at the stupidity and selfishness on display here, in the name of some nebulous notion of 'freedom'. And naturally a number of far right players have glommed on to an opportunity for mayhem, and naturally a bunch of Conservative MPs are cheerfully and cluelessly voicing their support anyway, because it might make Justin Trudeau look bad. 

I feel like I should have something lighter to segue into the book part, but I don't. I saw one of my health care providers who has become a friend yesterday and her mother died of Covid last week. She had comorbidities, but they were all managed well, and she was active and fine and would absolutely be alive if not for Covid. And my friend was grateful and sympathetic to the hospital employees who took care of her mother, even though she couldn't see her for the five days she was in the hospital. Contrast that with these happy assholes blazing a path across Canada because they don't want to get vaccinated, or... something. I'm just so angry.

Four-Star Mystery

The Shadow by Melanie Raabe: Synopsis from Goodreads: 'On February 11 you will kill a man called Arthur Grimm. Of your own free will. And for a good reason.' Norah has just moved from Berlin to Vienna in order to leave her old life behind her for good when a homeless woman spits these words at her. Norah is unnerved- many years earlier, something terrible happened to her on February 11. She shrugs this off as a mere coincidence, however, until shortly afterwards she meets a man called Arthur Grimm. Soon Norah begins to have a dreadful suspicion- does she have a good reason to take revenge on Grimm? What really happened in the worst night of her life all those years ago? And can Norah make sure that justice is done without herself committing murder?

This wasn't really at all what I thought it was going to be - in a good way. I thought it was going to be a Sophie Hannah-esque mindfuck where something inexplicable happens and then somehow it's explicable in a really twisted way. Okay, it kind of is that, but not really. I enjoyed the European sensibility and the spare writing style. Norah is an almost proudly unlikable character in some ways, which I always find kind of refreshing.

The Substitute by Nicole Lundrigen: Synopsis from Goodreads: Warren Botts is a disillusioned Ph.D., taking a break from his lab to teach middle-school science. Gentle, soft-spoken, and lonely, he innocently befriends Amanda, one of his students. But one morning, Amanda is found dead in his backyard, and Warren, shocked, flees the scene. As the small community slowly turns against him, an anonymous narrator, a person of extreme intelligence and emotional detachment, offers insight into events past and present. As the tension builds, we gain an intimate understanding of the power of secrets, illusions, and memories. Nicole Lundrigan uses her prodigious talent to deliciously creepy effect, producing a finely crafted page-turner and a chilling look into the mind of a psychopath.

Reminiscent of The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. As an exceedingly bleak logic puzzle, it is brilliant. As a character study, it is amazing. As an extremely disheartening path to losing even more faith in humanity, it is superlative. As a read in February during a global pandemic it was a very poor choice and I had some regrets.

The Less Dead by Denise Mina: Synopsis from Goodreads: Margot is having a thirtysomething crisis: She's burning out at work, a public-health practice; she's just left her longtime boyfriend after discovering he was cheating; and her mother recently died. The only silver lining to her mother's death is that Margot, who was adopted, can finally go looking for her birth mother. 

What she finds is an imcomplete family--the only person left is Nikki, her mother's older sister. Aunt Nikki brings upetting news: Margot's mother is dead, murdered many years ago, one of a series of sex workers killed in Glasgow. The killer--or killers?--has never been found, Aunt Nikki claims. They're still at large... and sending her letters, gloating letters that include the details of the crime. Now Margot must choose: take the side of the world against her dead mother, or investigate her murder and see that justice is done at last. Darkly funny and sharply modern, Denise Mina's latest novel is an indelible, surprisingly moving story of daughters and mothers, blood family and chosen family, and how the search for truth helps one woman to find herself.

Denise Mina is devastatingly accomplished at writing mysteries with an acute sensibility regarding social inequality and injustice, the treatment of the mentally ill, domestic abuse and police corruption. She writes several excellent series, multiple really good stand-alones, and a fictional account of a wild true crime case. She can be penetrating and incisive, but is also often whimsical and humorous. Her talent is incredible. Also, she's Scottish so she probably has a killer accent. 

The Monsters We Make by Kali White: Synopsis from Goodreads: It's August 1984, and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing. Hours later, twelve-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route, red-faced and out of breath, hiding a terrible secret. Crystal, Sammy's seventeen-year-old sister, is worried by the disappearance but she also sees opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy, one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award winning essay, one that could win her a scholarship - and a ticket out of their small Iowa town. Officer Dale Goodkind can't believe his bad luck: another town and another paperboy kidnapping. But this time he vows that it won't go unsolved. As the abductions set in motion an unpredictable chain of violent, devastating events touching each life in unexpected ways, Dale is forced to face his own demons. 

Told through interwoven perspectives--and based on the real-life Des Moines Register paperboy kidnappings in the early 1980's--The Monsters We Make deftly explores the effects of one crime exposing another and the secrets people keep hidden from friends, families, and sometimes, even themselves.

This could have gone in fiction, but I am frequently irritated by the short shrift given to genre fiction, and it is about crime, so...anyway, it was well-written, engaging and really interesting, considering it's a book about a serial killer before serial killers were really understood to be a thing. It's both fascinating and frustrating to see people treating issues like pedophilia, grooming and childhood trauma so ham-fistedly, and enraging seeing the poor abused child try to get help and fail. Crystal was a great character, the budding journalist desperate to pay enough dues to get out of a small town and coming so close so often to putting the pieces together. I don't usually love fictional books based on real events or true crime, or maybe it's more that I just don't reach for them often for whatever reason, but this was excellent.

The Crossing Places (Ruth Galloway #1) by Elly Griffiths: Synopsis from Goodreads: Forensic archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway is in her late thirties and lives happily alone with her two cats in a bleak, remote area near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants—not quite earth, not quite sea. But her routine days of digging up bones and other ancient objects are harshly upended when a child’s bones are found on a desolate beach. Detective Chief Inspector Nelson calls Galloway for help, believing they are the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing a decade ago and whose abductor continues to taunt him with bizarre letters containing references to ritual sacrifice, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives a new letter—exactly like the ones about Lucy. Is it the same killer or a copycat murderer, linked in some way to the site near Ruth’s remote home? 

I kept going back and forth on how I felt about this, which is likely down to my mood more than the book. I really liked the parts about the marsh and the henge, the archaeological significance and historical importance. I got a little annoyed by the insistence on portraying Ruth as a sad single lady and at the harping about her weight (not saying she shouldn't have been written that way, just that it rubbed me the wrong way). DCI Nelson is a good example of a Standard Issue British cop with a couple of flourishes that work. I sort of guessed the Bad Guy but that didn't really detract from the story. It didn't blow me away, but I will probably check out the next in the series.

The Postscript Murders (Harbinder Kaur #2) by Elly Griffiths: Synopsis from Goodreads: The death of a ninety-year-old woman with a heart condition should not be suspicious. Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur certainly sees nothing out of the ordinary when Peggy’s caretaker, Natalka, begins to recount Peggy Smith’s passing. But Natalka had a reason to be at the police station: while clearing out Peggy’s flat, she noticed an unusual number of crime novels, all dedicated to Peggy. And each psychological thriller included a mysterious postscript: PS: for PS. When a gunman breaks into the flat to steal a book and its author is found dead shortly thereafter—Detective Kaur begins to think that perhaps there is no such thing as an unsuspicious death after all. And then things escalate: from an Aberdeen literary festival to the streets of Edinburgh, writers are being targeted. DS Kaur embarks on a road trip across Europe and reckons with how exactly authors can think up such realistic crimes.

This is by the same author as the previous book, but I had NONE of the associated ambivalence. This book made me wonder why EVERY book doesn't have a Ukrainian caregiver, a coffee shop guy and a random senior citizen trying to solve a murder. I would have said I have no use for 'cozies' (murder mysteries where sex and violence are only ever implied, not depicted, and the detectives are usually amateurs, which doesn't entirely work here because there is one actual police officer, but still), and generally my taste runs a bit darker (wait, not that I like reading descriptions of violence, stop looking at me like that), but this kind of thing - a meeting of disparate minds and personalities, events that run the gamut from offbeat to madcap - hit perfectly when I read it. 

The Dry (Aaron Falk #1) by Jane Harper: Synopsis from Goodreads: A small town hides big secrets in this atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by award-winning author Jane Harper. In the grip of the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily when three members of a local family are found brutally slain. Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk reluctantly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend, loath to face the townsfolk who turned their backs on him twenty years earlier. But as questions mount, Falk is forced to probe deeper into the deaths of the Hadler family. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret. A secret Falk thought was long buried. A secret Luke's death now threatens to bring to the surface in this small Australian town, as old wounds bleed into new ones.

I can't get enough of Australian mystery series at the moment. This one has been on my radar for a while, finally got it from the library as an ebook. The sense of place and mood is incredible - viscerally atmospheric. You can practically feel the heat and taste the dust and desperation. Fantastic characters and descriptions. It's cinematic (has been made into a movie, in fact) but beautifully written. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

The Survivors by Jane Harper: Synopsis from Goodreads: Coming home dredges up deeply buried secrets... Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home. Kieran's parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away.

I borrowed this thinking it was another book in the same series as the previous book, but it's a standalone. I liked it maybe a little bit more even. The very first scene was so vividly described I read it several times - the landscape is almost a character in its own right, strikingly represented throughout. This is a book about relationships, between families and friends, and how misunderstanding and dysfunction therein results in tragic events. 

Girl, 11 by Amy Suiter Clark: Synopsis from Goodreads: Once a social worker specializing in kids who were the victims of violent crime, Elle Castillo is now the host of a popular true crime podcast that tackles cold cases of missing children in her hometown of the Twin Cities. After two seasons of successfully solving cases, Elle decides to tackle her white whale—The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago, TCK abruptly stopped after establishing a pattern of taking and ritualistically murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. No one’s ever known why—why he stopped with his eleventh victim, a girl of eleven years old, or why he followed the ritual at all.

When a listener phones in with a tip, Elle sets out to interview him, only to discover his dead body. And within days, a child is abducted following the original TCK MO. Unlike the experts in the media and law enforcement who have always spun theories of a guilty suicide, Elle never believed TCK had died, and her investigation was meant to lay that suspicion to rest. But instead, her podcast seems to be kicking up new victims.

Another mystery about a murder podcast. On Goodreads in the questions section for this book, someone asked 'would you recommend it'? and someone else kind of haughtily said no, why would you want to read about sadistic murder and the torment of families? And if you do, there's plenty of true crime out there. So... you're feeling superior for reading about ACTUAL murder rather than fictional? People are funny. I do wonder sometimes about why I've been drawn to books like this since I was quite young. I think it's just part of the desire to understand where violent impulses come from, as well as the whole "pity and fear" catharsis effect. Anyway, this was really good - intricately plotted, gives a good reckoning of the effects of working with this subject matter on the main character, suspenseful and smart. 

The Best Friend (Broden Legal #3) by Adam Mitzner: Synopsis from Goodreads: Back in 1986, Clint Broden was a novice New York defense attorney building a family with his wife, Anne, and impatient for his career to take off. That’s when his defense of his closest friend, Nick Zamora, made headlines. In spite of his lingering suspicions that his soul mate since childhood had a secret, Clint was dedicated to believing Nick hadn’t murdered his new bride. Three decades later, Clint is now the celebrated go-to attorney for the rich and famous. Nick is a lauded literary superstar living his dreams in Los Angeles. Though separated by thirty years and three thousand miles, they’re still bound by one thing—the trial that tested the limits of their friendship. After all these years, the last thing Clint expects is to be pulled back into Nick’s disruptive life. But this time, his motives for getting involved might be different from proving his old friend’s innocence. It could be Clint’s last chance to force a reckoning with the sins of the past.

Three and a half? I admit I thought "this isn't really my kind of thing" a couple times early on in the book, and then I realized I couldn't stop reading and really wanted to know where it was going. The prose is fairly workmanlike, and the narrative - even the trials, which you might think would merit a bit more detail - is brisk to the point of hurried, but it also doesn't get bogged down, it's just more of a beach read than a long courtroom procedural. The sections from different viewpoints technique works really well here, and the twists feel earned rather than jammed in. There was one event that I thought deserved more attention, until I realized it's addressed in previous books in this series, and then I was grateful that the author didn't rehash it all in case I decided to read the other ones. Despite the energetic pace, there are a few good moments of insight about marriage, friendships, betrayal, guilt and redemption, and some engaging explanations of parts of the law and the judicial process. The judge in Nick's second trial is an absolute badass and I love her. This was an enjoyable and diverting pandemic read.

In Bitter Chill (DC Connie Childs #1) by Sarah Ward: Synopsis from Goodreads: In 1978, a small town in Derbyshire, England is traumatised by the kidnapping of two young schoolgirls. One girl, Rachel, is later found unharmed but unable to remember anything except that her abductor was a woman. 

Over thirty years later the mother of the still missing Sophie commits suicide. Superintendent Llewellyn, who was a young constable on the 1978 case, asks DI Francis Sadler and DC Connie Childs to look again at the kidnapping to see if modern police methods can discover something that the original team missed. However, Sadler is convinced that a more recent event triggered Yvonne Jenkins’s suicide. Rachel, with the help of her formidable mother and grandmother, recovered from the kidnapping and has become a family genealogist. She remembers nothing of the abduction and is concerned that, after Yvonne Jenkins’s suicide, the national media will be pursuing her for a story once more. Days later, the discovery of one of her former teachers’ strangled body suggested a chain of events is being unleashed. Rachel and the police must unpick the clues to discover what really happened all those years ago. But in doing so, they discover that the darkest secrets can be the ones closest to you.

I am fascinated by books that examine the effects of years-ago traumatic events on the present, and this was done incredibly well. Rachel's job as a family genealogist connects powerfully to the mystery, and the web of family secrets at the heart of the puzzle. For a debut novel the writing here is remarkably assured. Rachel is such a strong character that I sort of missed that the female Detective Constable was actually the series character - I feel like she comes into her own a bit more in the second book. 

The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor: Synopsis from Goodreads: An unconventional vicar moves to a remote corner of the English countryside, only to discover a community haunted by death and disappearances both past and present--and intent on keeping its dark secrets--in this explosive, unsettling thriller from acclaimed author C. J. Tudor. Welcome to Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself. Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping to make a fresh start and find some peace. Instead, Jack finds a town mired in secrecy and a strange welcome package: an old exorcism kit and a note quoting scripture. "But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known." The more Jack and her daughter Flo get acquainted with the town and its strange denizens, the deeper they are drawn into their rifts, mysteries, and suspicions. And when Flo is troubled by strange sightings in the old chapel, it becomes apparent that there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.But uncovering the truth can be deadly in a village where everyone has something to protect, everyone has links with the village's bloody past, and no one trusts an outsider. 

Four books in, C.J. Tudor is a reliably great read for me - although it just now occurred to me to check which gender she was. She generally writes about small, insular communities featuring characters who unwillingly live there or are forced to return. There are hints of supernatural forces, but most destruction stems from bigotry, classism and humanity's worst impulses.

The Plot by Jean Hanff Koralitz: Synopsis from Goodreads: Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what's left of his self-respect; he hasn't written--let alone published--anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then... he hears the plot. Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker's first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that--a story that absolutely needs to be told. In a few short years, all of Evan Parker's predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says. As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his "sure thing" of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?

Hailed as breathtakingly suspenseful, Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it. 

Just to get it out there, if you're thinking that no author would be self-assured enough to first describe a plot as a can't-miss sure thing and then actually go ahead and write the plot? You would be wrong. If you're thinking that there's no way an author could formulate a plot that everyone would agree is a can't-miss sure thing? You would be right. That wasn't what was compelling about the book for me, though. Male writer characters - especially ones with writer's block, or ones that were previously successful and are now washed-up - can be incredibly annoying, but also kind of fascinating. The issue of Jake's guilt and terror of being discovered is also transfixing, in a sort of horrified schadenfreude way. See also: Stephen King's Secret Window Secret Garden.

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay: Synopsis from Goodreads: “They found the bodies on a Tuesday.” So begins this twisty and breathtaking novel that traces the fate of the Pine family, a thriller that will both leave you on the edge of your seat and move you to tears. After a late night of partying, NYU student Matt Pine returns to his dorm room to devastating news: nearly his entire family—his mom, his dad, his little brother and sister—have been found dead from an apparent gas leak while vacationing in Mexico. The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain—and they won’t tell Matt why. The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Charlotte—was the subject of a viral true crime documentary suggesting that Danny was wrongfully convicted. Though the country has rallied behind Danny, Matt holds a secret about his brother that he’s never told anyone: the night Charlotte was killed Matt saw something that makes him believe his brother is guilty of the crime. When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he’s faced with a hostile community that was villainized by the documentary, a frenzied media, and memories he’d hoped to leave behind forever. Now, as the deaths in Mexico appear increasingly suspicious and connected to Danny’s case, Matt must unearth the truth behind the crime that sent his brother to prison—putting his own life in peril—and forcing him to confront his every last fear. Told through multiple points-of-view and alternating between past and present, Alex Finlay's Every Last Fear is not only a page-turning thriller, it’s also a poignant story about a family managing heartbreak and tragedy, and living through a fame they never wanted.

Okay, fine, maybe I AM a twisted sicko. I really, really liked this though. Not because of all the death and heartbreak, but because of the retracing of the family's journey which had a lot of redemption involved. They were still dead at the end, but that happens in regular fiction too!