‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

‘Salem’s Lot is a small New England town with white clapboard houses, tree-lined streets, and solid church steeples. That summer in ‘Salem’s Lot was a summer of home-coming and return; spring burned out and the land lying dry, crackling underfoot. Late that summer, Ben Mears returned to ‘Salem’s Lot hoping to cast out his own devils… and found instead a new unspeakable horror.

A stranger had also come to the Lot, a stranger with a secret as old as evil, a secret that would wreak irreparable harm on those he touched and in turn on those they loved.

All would be changed forever—Susan, whose love for Ben could not protect her; Father Callahan, the bad priest who put his eroded faith to one last test; and Mark, a young boy who sees his fantasy world become reality and ironically proves the best equipped to handle the relentless nightmare of ‘Salem’s Lot.

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Read from October 24, 2020 – October 30, 2020

If it weren’t for Twilight, I’d be less hesitant to say that vampires are my favourite monster. I feel like they lost some serious street cred after being portrayed as these sparkly pretty boys, but I’m actually terrified of the more traditional blood-sucking fiends. I definitely wouldn’t want to be one though, I’d be terrible at it. I love garlic, I’m very much a morning person, and there’s no way in hell that I’d want to be immortal, these 22 years have already been too much of a struggle.

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

A murder on the high seas. A detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.

It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.

But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered.

And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.

Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.

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Read from October 18, 2020 – October 24, 2020

Stu, if I may call you that, you seem like a really rad lad, but this might have to be the last book of yours that I read. There are many people who love your work and that’s awesome, but unfortunately I’m not one of them. Your books actually remind me a lot of my university diploma: a waste of time, money, and paper, but at least I can use them as decoration.

The Troop by Nick Cutter

Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip; a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder — shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry — stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected … and one another.

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Read from October 1, 2020 – October 4, 2020

*originally posted on October 4, 2020, but WordPress was being a turd and it got deleted and went back to my drafts somehow*

ring…ring…ring…beeeep

Hi, thanks for calling, sorry I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m currently unable to take your call because I’ve been stuck in therapy since reading this book. I’ll call you back as soon as possible, but it’ll probably be a while.

Protected: so i guess i have a cat now (^･ｪ･^)

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Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns with Ring Shout, a dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror.

D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and The Birth of a Nation is a spell that drew upon the darkest thoughts and wishes from the heart of America. Now, rising in power and prominence, the Klan has a plot to unleash Hell on Earth.

Luckily, Maryse Boudreaux has a magic sword and a head full of tales. When she’s not running bootleg whiskey through Prohibition Georgia, she’s fighting monsters she calls “Ku Kluxes.” She’s damn good at it, too. But to confront this ongoing evil, she must journey between worlds to face nightmares made flesh–and her own demons. Together with a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter, Maryse sets out to save a world from the hate that would consume it.

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Read from October 15, 2020 – October 16, 2020

I gotta say, there’s probably nothing more satisfying than reading about a bunch of hateful, racist pieces of sh*t get said sh*t kicked out of them. Wait, no, scratch that. There’s probably nothing more satisfying than reading about a bunch of hateful, racist pieces of sh*t get said sh*t kicked out of them with magic.

Misery by Stephen King

Novelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon’s number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident. The former nurse takes care of him in her remote house, but becomes irate when she discovers that the author has killed Misery off in his latest book. Annie keeps Sheldon prisoner while forcing him to write a book that brings Misery back to life.

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Read from October 13, 2020 – October 15, 2020

Mr. King, I’d like to apologize on behalf of all readers. I know we can get a little fanatic about books sometimes, but I swear that we’re not all like Annie. Sure, maybe there have been times when I’ve been tempted to send an angry tweet or something like that, but I am definitely not crazy enough to do what Annie did. Besides, even if I really wanted to, you know, kidnap and torture an author because I was upset with one of their books, then I probably wouldn’t be able to because I don’t actually have a guest bedroom nor an endless supply of drug samples. See? Impossible. *vague noises that are definitely not coming from the basement and definitely do not sound like the author of The Last Time I Lied*

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

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Read from October 7, 2020 – October 10, 2020

This is how it ends.

A girl finishes this book in the middle of the night. Her eyes won’t stop leaking and her heart is heavy, but she’s grateful that a book like this exists.

I tend to overanalyze things, however, I’m not going to do that with this book. I loved it, and I’d rather write about how it made me feel and what I took away from it than try to describe why I liked it so much. Sometimes we like things for inexplicable reasons, and I know I would miss something in trying to distill my thoughts into a single post. Besides, I wasn’t really keeping notes while reading this, which is what I usually do when I’m planning to write a review, because I wanted to fully enjoy and experience it while reading it. This blog is mainly used to get rid of my PBD, that feeling I’m left with after finishing a book, but this book and the feelings it left me with deserve to be remembered so that’s what I’m going to do.

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she—or anyone—saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.

Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings—massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends.

Yet it’s immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp’s twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present.

And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price.

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Read from October 4, 2020 – October 6, 2020

Let’s play Two Truths and a Lie. I’ll go first. One: This book is called The Last Time I Lied. Two: It was written by Riley Sager. Three: I enjoyed reading it. Can you tell which one’s the lie?