2019's In-Lieu List

Hello, readers.   I could give a lot of reasons I haven't updated in a long time - some of them are reasons we all share for not being particularly motivated right now - but I'm going to get right to it.


I read some very good stuff last year that I need to pass on, so in (temporary) lieu of full reviews, I wanted to share a list of my top reads from 2019.  Each one has a handy link to its Goodreads page instead of Amazon, since I don't presume everybody wants or has the means to make purchases right now.  I love Goodreads and I often use my to-read list to look for books I can borrow from various libraries.  Here's the list - I've noted a few things, such as format and audience if it's not adult fiction.  Please comment if you have something (spoiler-free) to add about any of the books or would like to recommend to me and the other viewers.  Here's hoping for a more productive season - stay safe and keep reading.

1. Doctor Who: Nothing O'Clock (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary E-Shorts #11)    Neil Gaiman
2. Harrow County Volume 1: Countless Haints    Cullen Bunn *graphic novel*
3. Recursion    Blake Crouch
4. The Last Time I Lied    Riley Sager
5. Hangman    Jack Heath
6. Just One Bite   Jack Heath *sequel to Hangman*
7. Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century, #6)    Cherie Priest  *short, ok to read alone if you haven't read the series*
8. This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us    Edgar Cantero
9. The Cape    Jason Ciaramella  *graphic novel*
10. The Guild Volume 1    Felicia Day  *graphic novel*
11. Elevation    Stephen King  *short*
12. Yesterday    Felicia Yap
13. Nyctophobia    Christopher Fowler
14. Ghosts of Gotham    Craig Schaefer
15. Cold Spectrum (Harmony Black, #4)    Craig Schaefer
16. Glass Predator (Harmony Black, #3)    Craig Schaefer
17. Red Knight Falling (Harmony Black, #2)    Craig Schaefer
18. Harmony Black (Harmony Black, #1)    Craig Schaefer
19. Cari Mora    Thomas  Harris
20. The Accident Season    Moira Fowley-Doyle  *YA lit*
21. Small Spaces (Small Spaces, #1)    Katherine Arden  *kids lit*
22. Invasive    Chuck Wendig
23. Zeroes    Chuck Wendig
24. Someone Like Me    M.R. Carey
25. Jane Steele    Lyndsay Faye
26. Truly Devious (Truly Devious, #1)    Maureen Johnson
27. Alice Isn't Dead    Joseph Fink
28. The Suicide Motor Club    Christopher Buehlman

Slasher Girls & Monster Boys, stories chosen by April Genevieve Tucholke

I almost never recommend short story collections.  It's usually because I can't justify telling someone to watch a dozen little mind-movies when half of them seem pointless or hackneyed.  I'm writing this review because I just got punched by one of the best YA collections I've found in years.  YEARS.  Good horror and good short stories make my day.  This book just slammed them together in the best way and I could not find a bad story in the bunch.  Not one.  This is not a book, it's a frigging unicorn.  A really creepy unicorn.  Maybe this one:

I'm guessing this one isn't powered by giggles and joy.

 Anyway, the YA genre has certainly come a long way and gets a lot more gruesome than it did back in my day (sorry, Mr. Pike), but it seems paranormal romance (aka "my boyfriend is hot and toothy") has gotten spread around like hybrid herpes and the horror genre itself hasn't really been properly bringing its kid sibling along.  I decided to give this one a chance because of, well, the cover alone:

 Even if YA's not your prime choice, SGMB has *chops*, with everything from shapeshifting vigilantes to mountain legends to zombie comedy and while some of it wasn't especially brand-new subjects, all of it gave me some creeps, some new authors to look for and, in places, a longing for the good old horror that swept in before torture and remakes took over. Some of the stories may be what you consider typical fare for a collection.  A Lewis Carroll-inspired story is almost par for the horror course, I think, but Carrie Ryan's "In The Forest Dark and Deep" made my skin crawl and I now desperately need to avoid teacups.   The very last story, a revenge piece called "On The I-5" by Kendare Blake, felt so clear and cold to me that I wanted to see it on a screen, to see if the diner lights and desert grave were that vivid *outside* my head. (I just received a reply from Ms. Blake saying this story is being adapted to film, so buckle up and keep an eye out.)


A feature that made my day as well was the bit of info at the end of each story, written upside down:  the film, book or song that inspired the author.  There's a bit of everything in here, from slasher movies to classic novels to a Nirvana song that I had to actually Google.  Some of the stories' inspirations are easy to spot, others not so much.

TL:DR Tucholke knows how to pick 'em and this book has a flight of tastes that kept me reading.

The Last Thing I Told You by Emily Arsenault

Full disclosure:  I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review.  What I wish I'd also received was a better pay-off for a story with a lot of promise.  Generally, I like novels about therapists and psychologists. The variety of patient stories, the struggle for their own stability, and the chance of great surprise when it turns out they are much scarier than anything you’d hear in their sessions.  Not everybody can be Hannibal, but there’s always that chance that the plaid suit and the kitchen utensils will come out by the tenth session. I got hooked into this particular story with the promise of a mystery and an unraveling patient-doctor relationship.

The book opens in the office of Mark Fabian, therapist for years and corpse for hours.  His head is bashed in, his patient notes are sketchy, and oh, by the way, his closest friends report him as having memory problems recently, so good luck with those notes again. The chapters alternate between narrators Henry, a local cop who gained fame from a retirement home shooting a few years previously, and Nadine, a former patient of Fabian’s.  I’m still getting my head around a shooter in a frigging *retirement home.* Not that it’s too farfetched these days, but what the what?

Betty White would have taken his punk ass out in a second.

Nadine’s story alternates between the present and 1997, when she was in therapy after a violent incident at school – with all this backstory, you expect her underlying psychosis to be something shocking.  She even writes that perversion is in her blood (cue dramatic music).  I don’t know if the author planned something bigger to explain the build-up to the outburst and then gave up or we’re actually supposed to be shocked by something that turns out to be terribly garden-variety.

Henry’s side of things covers his involvement in the shooting (he took down a shooter and is now a local hero who just wants people to stop calling him that) and his attempt to piece together how Fabian (I kept reading that as ‘Fabio’) wound up dead.  Oh, and his kids are getting warped by fairytales with iron shoes and decapitations.  I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a cautionary bit about your kids winding up in therapy or a suggestion for scary stuff hidden in children’s fiction. Either way, now I want to read ‘The Red Shoes.’

Honestly, this book felt like such a tangled mess that I can barely write this review.  It started out so readable and then just seemed to drag into wet noodles. Other crimes in the area are mentioned, but written in an almost throw-away fashion, even though they are suddenly a big deal for the ending.  There’s no startling reveal of some long-buried secret to explain Nadine’s violence.  There’s no startling reveal that Henry is someone interesting.  Fabian’s murder has one of the most beige explanations I’ve ever read.

"Yes, I know, but I'm trying to look Scottish or something."

If a book starts out crap and then ends the same way, that’s bad. This whole bait-and-switch thing seems even worse, because now you’ve had a chance to get excited over where things are going. Surely this will not end in you slapping yourself awake at nine p.m. and throwing the book into the library donation bag.  Just because I was almost asleep doesn’t mean I take the whole bait-and-switch thing lying down. I won’t be looking for anything else by this author.  Now if someone will introduce me to a nice novel involving a suit and fork…

Last Words

"Don't embarrass me with this shit."

Investigator Mark Novak can't get those words out of his head; two years ago they were the last words he spoke to his wife before she was murdered.  It also happens to be exactly what I was thinking when I started this book.  I like Koryta but he's been hit ( So Cold the River ) or miss (Those Who Wish Me Dead) in the past.

Mark works for a pro bono company that frees wrongfully convicted criminals.  They get a letter from a small-town pariah named Ridley Barnes who isn't even in prison but for years has been under suspicion for murder.  When a girl went missing in the local caves, Ridley was the experienced (if mostly batshit, no pun intended) cave expert who brought her out.  Bad news was, she was dead and his time in the cave was riddled with memory holes and strange exclamations about the mystical qualities of the cave.  Didn't help he referred to the cave as a "she."  Anyway, the town decides he's guilty despite lack of evidence and Ridley decides he has to find out for himself if he is guilty.  Enter Novak, who has been careening around looking for whoever killed his wife.

Ridley's hometown of Garrison, IL has all the stereotypical small-town characters you'd expect and sadly, none of the surprises.  Again and again, Mark runs into people who won't talk, truth that's skirted like an antebellum housewife and characters that lack so much fleshing-out they may as well be on a forensics table.

I admit caves scare me silly, so if I'm going to spend even imaginary-time in one, there had better be a pay-off.  I waited and hoped that there would be something supernatural or at least surprising as the mystery unfolded, but only got a goose egg and a reveal that was lacking in both imagination and impact.  If you're interested in caving - or even not - and want an interesting story of what goes on down there,  let me recommend Jeff Long's The Descent (not the same story as the movie, trust me) or Cherie Priest's Those Who Went Remain There Still.

Project 17

Old-schoolers like me may recognize the author Joan Lowery Nixon, who wrote YA back in the day (80's, for all you youngsters). One of the few books I read as a kid that scared me mindless

Jack and Ma: reviewing Room

Emma Donoghue's new book, Room, is full of wonderfully unique surroundings such as Wardrobe, Bed, Rug, Plant and Bathtub.  For five-year-old Jack, there is no more than one of anything, so articles got tossed out (imaginary)Window.