Tag Archives: NetGalley

Review for This Wretched Valley By Jenny Kiefer

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I read this based on Cynthia Pelayo’s comments about it. She was Jenny’s mentor. It did not disappoint.

It’s been a long time since a book truly freaked me out. Last Days by Adam Nevill is the last one I can remember wanting to stop because I was freaked out. This was like that.

I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll backtrack.

The opening of this book reminds me of At The Mountains of Madness. They stumbled upon something amazing, a rockface that appeared out of the blue and where it shouldn’t be. Much the way it happened in Madness.

I’d been around climbing as a kid. My biological father did technical climbing. He climbed Mt. Rainer and a few others. I never learned this, though I would like to.

This book starts with how many of the lost in the woods books do, but when it takes a turn, it’s a hard turn. There are elements of Jack Ketchum in the darker parts of this book, as well as The Woods Are Dark by Richard Laymon.

I nearly stopped this book at 65%. I was completely freaked out by what was happening. My brain needed a break. I chalk this up to the prose and how well Jenny writes. Luckily, my Kindle, which I use to read books from NetGalley, needed to be charged. It gave me a few hours of respite. I dove in as soon as it was ready.

There are so many things to say about this book. It does not come out until January, but I would order it now. It’s going to be one of my favorite books going forward. Jenny’s description, her knowledge of climbing, and her sense of knowing what to put that will scare you all coalesce into a story about survival. About wanting something bad enough to risk your life to attain it.

This underlying theme in the story, whether one character or another, stayed with me when I closed the book. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. This will be my last review for a while unless something piques my interest. I do have other books to review through NetGalley, but I’ll be watching cartoons or reading comics for a while after this book. I need to wash my brain out for a bit.

Review For Forgotten Sisters by Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo

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My oldest and I went to Chicago when they were six. It was Father’s Day weekend. I’ve wanted to go to Chicago since I was a kid. I’ve been a Blackhawks fan since I was in Mites. If you don’t know, I was seven or eight. I’ve been fascinated by it. By the lake, the river, and the sports teams.

We went to the Adler Planetarium. We stayed at the Hotel Lincoln, where I had a ghost experience and attended a Cubs game at Wrigley.

Cina knows Chicago. She knows what the air tastes like in the winter. How the river freezes, leaving chunks of ice floating through it in the winter. She brings this knowledge to every story about Chicago. Its presence drips from the prose in her books and stories.

She takes you into her stories and their fairy tales the way no one can. She knows the city, the fairy tales she reconstructs and places them into the city’s history.

We should all know the story of the Little Mermaid, either from Disney or Hans Christian Andersen, but it’s Andersen’s version she takes hold of in Forgotten Sisters.

It opens with two sisters. They’ve suffered a tragedy, but we don’t know what it is early on.

The sister’s link to a series of deaths in Chicago opens many things about the story. Cynthia takes hold of the narrative of death, intricately weaving a tale about grief, loss, and death. The death from long ago and the death of the sister’s parents weave a tapestry rich with the history of Chicago, the ghosts who haunt the city, of which there are many, and take us on a journey of discovery with the main character.

Anyone whose lost a loved one knows this journey. We’re angry about what happened. We wish we could have fixed it, but in the end, we find our way to dealing with it the best way we can.

We think about that person often. We remember the good times we had. We consider what we lost when they left, and we sit in these memories.

We are born in a world where loss is inevitable. Sometimes we see it coming. Other times, it strikes when we least expect it.

Cina is one of my favorite writers. She carries a story through to the end. She makes the connections. I found tears in my eyes when I finished this book.

I try not to give spoilers in my reviews. You should come into Forgotten Sisters blind. I didn’t give much away. This has jumped to one of my favorite reads of the year. I can’t wait for its release.

Review For Spin A Black Yarn by Josh Malerman

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I have read two of Josh’s books, Bird Box and Daphne. My wife has read almost all of his books, but I’ve had trouble with them. At least, I used to. I intend to revisit his books after reading this collection of novellas.

Spoilers Ahead

Let’s start out with the first story. This one felt chaotic at first. As I settled in, making my way around the story as the characters makes their way around the house. It made me uncomfortable in a way I’ve tried to put into words. This has become difficult, at least with this story. The presences within Half The House Is Haunted made me think about my childhood.

There are numerous throughlines in this story. It’s longer than some of the others. I wonder if Josh thought of expanding it into something longer. It feels like it could have been longer.

My uncomfortableness with this story lies with the telling of it. The first sequence is about childhood and what we find in our house. It’s about discovering the parts of your house your parents forbid you from, siblings, and how we don’t get along with some of ours.

It reminds me of one of the houses I grew up in. We were forbidden from going into our parent’s room. Which is normal. But discovering the house between the siblings and their interactions scared me more than the story itself.

I’ll move forward to the next story, Argyle.

Have you ever had those thoughts? The ones you shouldn’t speak about? What if you decided to come clean on your deathbed. How would that go?

Luckily, Josh has done that for us, but if you want to spill your secrets, go for it. I won’t hold you back.

I enjoyed the hell out of this story. We’ve all had those uncomfortable thoughts. Or maybe it’s me. I love Shawn in this story. He was honest about letting go of who he wanted to be and not letting anyone know until the end of his life. The struggle of keeping those secrets is similar to the first story. It’s about secrets.

Doug and Judy Buy the House Washer

Doug and Judy worked their whole lives to have the best of everything, but they’ve sacrificed themselves to get there.

The house washer cleans everything up. It doesn’t hold back from those little things you’ve kept in drawers, literally and figuratively. As the cleaner makes its way through the house, we see the darkness within Doug and Judy. We see what they’ve done. Who they’ve done it to, and how far they’ve gone to get where they are. It was a fantastic exploration of what people will do to get ahead in life and business and to be better than those around them.

The scenes in the bubble gave me that claustrophobic feeling. It’s as much of us, the reader, watching them, and them watching their lives.

Jupiter Drop

I’d like to see Josh do more science fiction like this. The claustrophobic feeling of the box. I was fascinated by Steve and what happened to him and all the little details. This was a great exploration of doing anything to escape your problems, only to find them waiting for you.

Egorov

This was my favorite story in the collection. I recently finished The Brothers Karamazov and found the writing in this story similar, but one particular scene stood out. When one brother returns to a house to find a woman living in it, there is a scene in Egorov similar, or at least gave the same vibes.

The story of revenge is an almost Dickensian tale of scaring someone to get revenge for what they’ve done. It reminded me of many classic mystery and revenge books I’ve read.

I would like to see Josh write a novel-length book like this one. A revenge/mystery book.

I read this through NetGalley, but I will buy it when it comes out. I want to reread this last story.

Josh is a great writer, and I’ll go to Goblin soon.

Review for Mister Magic By Kiersten White

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“Adults are children with both more and less autonomy.”

The above quote was early in the book and stuck with me.

We meet our main character, Val, at a ranch owned by her father. It’s unclear why she’s there. There is a lot of mystery around her childhood and her father. Her father was the controlling type, but we discover something else as we delve deeper into the story.

I grew up where most of the book is set. I was an outsider looking at the LDS(Mormon) faith. I picked up on her innuendos that maybe others may not have seen.

But I’m getting sidetracked.

Val meets her friends Isaac, Marcus, and Javi early in the story. They inform her she was once a part of a TV show.

She leaves the only life she’s known to discover what she may have lost. There is a stream throughout the book about losing things and about trauma. It’s on how they talk about the show and won’t say Mister Magic’s name. This thread runs throughout the book.

This book has a lot to say about faith, religion, cults, and trauma. It may have been me reading into it, but I found the descriptions of how religion wants their kids to be a certain way. How they will do anything to make sure their kids behave, don’t talk back, and don’t use profanity. It felt like the life I watched friends grow up with while I stood outside the LDS faith.

I don’t like to give a book report or go chapter by chapter. I’ve done that. It doesn’t feel right to me as a reviewer. I’d rather put my personal touch on reviews. Which is why I stated the above.

The author knows her way around the subject without bludgeoning the reader.

Sometimes I read a sentence or paragraph and was like, yep, I remember that. The way people talk about how when a woman isn’t married by a certain age, there might be something wrong with her. My wife dealt with that. I watched family members marry early only to divorce later. It’s prevalent in Utah culture to marry out of high school, especially for women. If you don’t, something is wrong with you, or so they say.

The idea of a secret. Of something being held back from one another, a certain trauma coalesces at the end of the book. We never remember our childhood perfectly. There are bumps.

In the end, we want what’s best for our own kids. The hope that our kids have better childhoods than our own. That we give them something better than we had. That’s the hope of every decent parent.

I hope you enjoyed this review. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. I’ll be posting this on my substack as well. Happy reading.

Book Review for Cold, Black, & Infinite By Todd Keisling

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I’ve attempted this review three times. I get distracted by what I read in this collection. I’ve thought about it for the last week.

First, I’ve read Todd’s book, Devil’s Creek and Scanlines, and loved them. I was happy to see one story tied into Devil’s and another with the same theme. As someone who dealt with suicidal ideation, Scanlines was difficult, but I was better for reading it.

So, let’s get into it.

Midnight in the Southland is one of my favorite stories in this collection. I listened to Art Bell driving home from work when I lived in Las Vegas. It was late at night, and I worked graveyards and swings. I loved Art Bell. The people who came on that show were off the wall sometimes, but they believed their stories, and Art believed them.

This story reminded me of those nights. I would have known who it was for if Todd hadn’t put that dedication to Art Bell at the beginning. All those late nights driving home from work made me and my girlfriend(now wife) go out to Rachel, NV. We have our own stories about those trips.

2:45 to Mexico had Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and Tales from the Darkside feels, and it was a fantastic story. I’ve traveled by bus a couple of times. There are those people in stops that you’re not sure about. You keep your distance from them. There’s something off, even if you can’t grasp it.

HappyTown, man, this story was a lot of fun to read. It was a change from the other stories but fit into the collection.

Y2K: I remember the stress of working the night of Y2K. I was bartending on the Las Vegas strip. We were told to prepare for our computers to go down. For hysteria to eclipse the festivities of New Year’s Eve, but none of that happened. I’ve come up with a story idea after reading this one. I’ll have to spend some time with it, but this could have happened anywhere.

Black Friday: What’s better than zombies? A black Friday with zombies. I’ve worked retail a lot in my life. I worked at Blockbuster in the late 90s. We had some crazy nights, but our store had haunting issues, not zombies. I think about that store a lot. It’s where I met my future wife.

Tommy: This was one of those stories that felt out of place from the others. It feels that way with some collections. I’m sure it was added for levity. Who hasn’t wanted to get rid of their bullies? I had a couple in junior high that I would have done anything to eliminate.

Afterbirth: This was a story that struck a nerve with me. Having fertility issues early on, my wife and I considered many things, but this was not one of them. I liked this story and the tragedy of the MC, who only wants to have a child, but goes about it in a way that no one should ever do.

Annie’s Heart Is A Haunted House: Feels of Poe, Beast House By Richard Laymon, Sleeping Beauty, and Urban Gothic by Brian Keene. I liked this story a lot. The way the house takes its victims and moves them into the house was genius, and I loved watching them fall. Brian Keene’s Urban Gothic was my introduction to Extreme Horror and holds a special place. I saw instances of that book in this story.

The Gods Of Ours Fathers: Todd says this story was challenging to write. I understand the reasons. The brutality of the father and Mary’s brother overtakes my stomach. The writing brings it together in a way that could have faltered had it not been for Todd’s writing. The imagery within the story of Mary at the stones, of her asking for help from the Gods of her grandfather, of the blood on the rocks, and Mary’s blood from what her brother did, gave the story a resolution I hadn’t expected.

Solve For X: The black-eyed children have come for your kids. The imagery of this story and the ending with the eyeless child was great. While this is the shortest in the collection, it hangs in the air, and I would have liked it to be longer.

We’ve All Gone to Crooked Town: If you’ve ever been to a town on life support or lived in one of them, this story will hit home. I’ve done both. The little town of Granger, WY, where I lived during my Junior and Senior year of high school, is only a dot on the map, but I always wondered if the Green River that flowed through it would take the town one day, or the winter storms would. Neither happened, and the town is still there.

Granger was smaller than that town. Full of oil riggers and people working during the summer months, then returning to their families. I know what it feels like to wake up and hope the town you were in would vanish. I liked this story for those reasons.

Smile Factory: The Eldritch have you. They’re making you smile for what they want. This was an exciting story that left me guessing what was happening. It felt like a descent into madness at times. Having dealt with depression and those conditions myself, having to put on a smile to make my way through life is constant. This is what that felt like. Wearing a smile so no one thinks something is wrong is what you do when you’re depressed. It keeps the questions away.

Holes in the Fabric: Devil’s Creek is a favorite novel of mine. Seeing into the past of one of that novel’s characters was a great escape. I wondered about how she got where she was in Devil’s Creek. It was a fleshing-out of the character’s story that I enjoyed.

Happy Pills: We’ve all wanted that pill to make us feel normal. If you’ve dealt with depression, you have. I wouldn’t want to go as far as this story, though it does have its rewards.

Gethsemane: I read the title for this story and wondered how that could be turned into a horror story. It’s done well. I won’t give anything away with this one. You have to read it with an open mind. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We’ve All Gone To The Magic House: It felt like a Twilight Zone episode or an episode of Doctor Who. I wasn’t sure where it would end, but it tied everything together. I remember a place like the Magic House in my hometown. People remembered it being open, but no one could say what lay inside. Even now, I forget what the place was called.

I hope you enjoyed this review. I enjoyed reading the collection. It comes out on September 1, 2023. I will buy a copy of it and put it next to Scanlines.

On a side note, the choice of title and how each section was broken up was great. I am a huge Nine Inch Nails fan and have seen them 10 times. I knew I’d like this collection from the title.