Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu REVIEW

 Summary:

On the night of the Hungry Ghost Moon, when spirits can briefly return to the living world, Jodi Wu and her best friend sneak into Portland's Chinese Garden and Ghost Museum. Kneeling before the pond where Jodi's toddler drowned one year before, they leave food offerings and burn joss paper - and Jodi prays that Ella's ghost will return for the night.

To distract Jodi from her grief, the two friends tell each other ghost stories as they explore the museum. They stop at the main display, a centuries-old pair of lotus slippers belonging to a woman whose toes were broken and bound during childhood. While reading the woman's story, Jodi hears her daughter's voice.

As Jodi desperately searches for the garden, it becomes apparent that Ella isn't the only ghost they've awakened. Something ancient with a slow shuffling step lurks in the shadows . . .

My Thoughts:

Oh my god did I love this. The novella is pretty short, but it fits so well. The ending is a perfect wrap-up, and the main characters are both well developed. 

Jodi is still grieving the loss of her daughter, so her friend Sarah, who also lost a child, takes her to a garden and museum where the child died to give offerings. Sarah doesn't believe in ghosts, but Jodi does, and has hope that she will see her daughter again.

When Jodi hears Ella's voice, she is ecstatic and tries to find her, only to discover another ghost trying to steal her away. The said ghost happens to be one from the stories that they read, but the stories were not completely accurate. Only with the realization of the true story does Jodi find out Sarah's secret . . . and find a way to get her daughter back.

This book is dark, but in a good sort of way. I like how tied to the story the Chinese culture is. Learning things about different cultures through writing is one of my favorite things. Despite the length being on the shorter side, there are a few unexpected twists and turns along the way.

Yu is such a talented writer. She kept me drawn into the plot and characters to the point of me not wanting to put it down. I am definitely going to check out more of her work, and I hope she continues to write more stories.

Definitely a recommend from me.

My Rating: 5 stars

#thighgap by Chandler Morrison REVIEW

 Summary:

Los Angeles fashion model Helen Troy wasn't always skinny. Drastic weight loss has given her everything - money, confidence, attention, respect. Being thin has legitimized her, and starvation has become an addiction.

Following an encounter with a seemingly "perfect" rival model who destabilizes Helen's shaky self-confidence and shatters her fragile allusion of control, she's sent into a tragic tailspin that will take her to the lowest depths of hell. Nightmarish versions of herself begin materializing in mirrors, and her tried-and-true coping mechanisms stop working. Reality comes apart at the seams as Helen's disease manifests in increasingly self-destructive fashions, forcing her to ask herself . . .

What does perfection look like, and how much would you sacrifice to obtain it?

My Thoughts:

Disclaimer: I have not personally struggled with an eating disorder, so I will not be talking about whether it is an accurate description or not.

The main character, Helen Troy, is the narrator. These are her thoughts and conversations from her point of view. This is as expected from Morrison's writing. It is also a very different side of the horror genre for him as well. He is known for extreme horror, and this is more horror rooted in realism.

Helen is, well, obsessed. She was bullied as a child for being "fat", which turned her to the direction of "thinspo" and eating disorders. Helen has pretty much no friends too. Most people are just acquaintances, and the closest thing to a real relationship is a fwb kind of thing with a guy named Jasper. She attends therapy, but her counselor makes the situation worse in a way. He is incapable of listening and giving good advice, which is literally his job description. He also encourages her disordered eating habits. Helen starts seeing a "slug" version of herself in the mirror as well as a "skeleton" version of herself. 

When she hits a breaking point, she goes to seek a rehab facility that specializes in eating disorders. But they don't let her in, saying that she had been there before and attacked a worker. Helen has no recollection of this, but is forced to leave. She takes this as a sort of sign that she doesn't need to get help, and lets her eating disorder slowly kill her.

I honestly wish this was longer. It is never specified, but Helen seems to also have schizophrenia. The book left me with a melancholy aftertaste. The character never gets help, but she doesn't die at the end either. We're left with the assumption she was dying, but we don't know how close she is to death. The set of characters are mostly undeveloped, which is understandable for a novella.

I'm at the point where I will probably never dislike Morrison's books. So yes, I recommend it.

My Rating: 4 stars 

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix REVIEW

 Summary:

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. Far 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 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.

My Thoughts:

Was this hard to put down? Yes. But was it top tier? No.

Lynnette is an interesting choice for a main character. She isn't really that likeable, even though you are on her side against the killer. You would think that Julia would have been the main character. She is pretty likeable, and so is Dani. So Lynnette being the main character is different. Not bad, but just weird. 

The way the killer is handled as a big mystery so we don't know who it is was really good. The issue I had though, is that it would end up being a lot more interesting if the killer was actually the therapist and not her son, who really doesn't have a motive? It's kinda hard to believe. Scratch that, really hard to believe. And Stephanie being the "partner in crime" with him was dealt so lazily. It felt like a last minute addition to the final draft and not something that builds from the start of the character's journey. 

Parts of the book are also stagnant. I understand the need for character development (I very much love that), but it was overdone to the point of it having no bearing on the plot.

I enjoyed it, but probably won't read it again.

My Rating: 3 stars 

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones REVIEW

 My Thoughts:

I loved this book. It was a wild ride.

As a fan of the slasher genre myself, it was really cool to see Jade as the main character. Usually, a slasher only has one main character - the killer - and a final girl who is more developed than the other characters (but not by much). Jade is very much similar (and Jones recognizes this) to "Crazy Ralph" and other characters like him that warn everyone about the area but get labelled as crazy and mentally ill. Although, Jade is a teenager, not an old man. She's a bit relatable to myself - loves slasher films (and also references them a lot), a bit of an outcast, wants to die, and wishes her life was more interesting. 

Jade has had a lot of awful things in her life though. Her parents are divorced and she's living with her alcoholic father, and she hates it. Despite her initial insisting that her father never touched her, Jade admits that it happened toward the end of the book. She loves history, but she missed so much class that she is only partially graduating. There's a new girl named Letha who transferred into the school because her family moved there.

There is an eerie place on the other side of the lake that has resemblance to the history of the camp in Friday the 13th. 

Jade is never taken seriously, and when bodies do start dropping, she is accused of doing it since she is obsessed with horror.

The ending is pure chaos. I can't even describe what actually happened. Sure, in certain parts it makes sense, but a lot does not. When everyone out by the lake is dying, the killer isn't even known. It confuses me because originally, it was suspected to be Letha's father, but then it was revealed to be a ghost haunting the area from a local legend?  It's impossible to figure out if the killer is the dad, the ghost, or both of them.

Despite the ending, I did really enjoy this book.

My Rating: 4 stars

After Dark by Haruki Murakami REVIEW

 Summary:

At its center are two sisters - Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny's toward people whose lives are radically alien to her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they've met before, a burly female "love hotel" manager and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These "night people" are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Eri's slumber - mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime - will either restore or annihilate her.

My Thoughts:

I stumbled upon this book randomly in my library, and decided to give it a try. I'm so glad I did. Murakami's writing style is so unique, and I don't think I have ever read a book written this way before. The narrator of the novel is not only telling the story from a third person perspective, but also talking directly to the reader.

Mari is such an interesting choice for a main character. She's quiet and mostly keeps to herself. Eri is quite literally sleeping her life away. Takahashi is the complete opposite of Mari; he talks a lot and often engages in conversations with people he does not know.

The mundaneness of this novel is oddly refreshing. Pretty much everything that takes place is what people deal with on a daily basis: a prostitute being abused by her own customer, a musician that no longer wants to play his instrument, running into acquaintances, etc. The only thing that was unrealistic was the odd time where Eri got transported into a TV screen? It makes absolutely zero sense and is never acknowledged but it's intriguing. 

I kind of want a sequel. The end is not tied up, sort of like real life, and it makes the reader want more. I would also like to see Guo Dongli get justice. Her employers were given a picture of the attacker and they made threatening phone calls, but nothing comes of it by the end of the novel.

I'm definitely going to read more from this author.

My Rating: 5 stars

The Troop by Nick Cutter REVIEW

 Summary:

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfire. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There's Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there's Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim's job a little easier. But for some reason, he can't shake the feeling that something strange is in the air this year. Something waiting in the darkness. Something wicked . . .

It comes to them in the night. An unexpected intruder, stumbling upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry - a man in unspeakable torment who exposes Tim and the boys to something far more frightening than any ghost story. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine.

My Thoughts:

I decided to pick up this book due to the amount of horror fans raving about it. Unfortunately, it did not live up to the hype for me.

There is no one main character; everyone shares the spotlight. Tim is a doctor, so when he sees the sickly stranger on the island, he tries to help him and figure out what is wrong. The man will eat anything - literally - but is still deathly thin. And what he has is contagious, and Tim is the first to get infected. It is an engineered parasite inside of the infected that takes all of the food from their bodies. Max, Eph, and Newt are by far the most likeable characters besides Tim. For the most part, they keep to their morals, unlike the rest. Kent and Shelley are extremely polarizing characters. Kent is kind of a bully, but he's fine until he gets infected. The issue is that Kent doesn't want to isolate himself from the others when he knows that he is infected. Shelley is just downright a terrible person, both on the island and at home. At home, he gets off by killing animals, and on the island, he gets off on killing his groupmates. Max ends up being the sole survivor.

In between chapters, there are articles and interviews about the genetically modified worms. The doctor who started the experiment is on trial, and he refuses to take responsibility for his work. Then there's the army, who are quarantining the kids on the island. They don't care at all about the fact that they are pretty much killing children. The stranger on the island was part of the experiment, but he ran away, and it is hinted that someone let him escape.

Max is obviously traumatized by the events. His friends and groupmates are all dead, and there was nothing he could do about it. So it makes sense that he isn't exactly right in the head and suppresses his memories so that he can't think about it.

This book is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, but not really memorable in any way. It's basically Lord of the Flies but with a contagious disease. It just doesn't stand out or on its own. It wasn't different enough to really land well.

My Rating: 3 stars

The Book of Demons by Kevin Moore REVIEW

 Summary:

When Mr. Philips discovers a powerful, cursed painting whose magic he can use for personal gain, he will stop at nothing to acquire it . . . including murder.

Before he can get his hands on it, the painting goes missing and its artist is found dead. Enraged, Mr. Philips vows to hunt it down. But someone else finds it first: Jack, a teenage mystic who understands the painting's tremendous power and would do anything to keep Mr. Philips from exploiting it.

Along with two unexpected allies - a nonverbal autistic child and the spirit of a dead nun - Jack battles to keep the painting away from Mr. Philips. But as the stakes rise along with the body count, their epic battle for possession of the painting may cost Jack everything and everyone he loves.

My Thoughts: 

I will preface this by saying that I have not read the first book, so a lot of my confusion may be due to that fact.

This book was an easy, enjoyable read. It is perfect for not wanting to think too much but still think (if that makes sense).

Jack is a teenage boy with psychic abilities whose friends are all basically adults. His father has no idea what things that he is capable of. Jack is good friends with Peter Cairo, who is pretty much the only person that knows about Jack's abilities. Peter has also been in the mental ward, so his dad is concerned with the odd friendship. Jack goes to a catholic school, where he has to hide his abilities even more or he'll be accused of Satanism. 

Philips is a villain that can shape-shift by eating the heart of what he wants to impersonate. That's a really interesting concept. 

Now to the confusing parts. The origin story of the painting and what exactly it can do is nowhere to be found. We only learn a couple things about it here and there with no deep exploration. There is also Jack. He is a teenager, but some parts of the book say that he is married with children? Maybe it's a time jump, but it is never really talked about.

I would definitely recommend this to readers who want to have a quick yet fun read.

My Rating: 4 stars