Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I read this for my bookclub and we had our discussion last night where I found myself going to bat for it in a way I didn’t expect. I was both surprised that the other women weren’t on board with it and surprised at how invested in it I had turned out to be. This review might have been a little different if I’d written it yesterday, but context is everything. I find horror as a genre fascinating but I hate being scared which means […]
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
What a journey this book was… This year, I’m trying to branch out and read in different genres and modes, and this book is definitely something that I wouldn’t have picked up before. The Hollow Places follows Kara (sometimes called Carrot) who moves in with her uncle to help him run his Museum of Wonders after her divorce. It’s a convenient arrangement for each of them as Kara avoids moving in with her mother – whom she loves, but wouldn’t love living with – and […]
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
I’ve mentioned that I haven’t read a lot of horror novels outside of Stephen King, and while this novel is not exactly horror in the way that not all of King’s novel are either, I find Robert McCammon’s name to be in the same circle as King’s. For the record, I think this way almost exclusively because of the shelves at the local Paperback Exchange in my hometown, which also included Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Dennis Etchison, Dean Koontz, and the like. So […]
The Accursed Vampire by Madeline McGrane
The Accursed Vampire looked like it would be a funny story. I mean, a story of three vampire kids? You know there is going to be hijinks. I was ready for Madeline McGrane to dazzle me. Instead, I was, not underwhelmed nor overwhelmed by the result. What happens when three kids set off on an adventure to steal a book that was stolen from the master of one of them? (A master who just happens to be a witch)? You get The Accursed Vampire. These […]
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Morena-Garcia
After reading and enjoying Turn of the Screw, I craved more gothic literature. Silvia Morena-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic kept popping up on booklists everywhere, so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s now been three days since I finished the novel and I think I finally figured out how I feel about it. Set in 1950s Mexico, Mexican Gothic follows Noemí Taboada’s journey to conduct a wellness check on her cousin Catalina at the behest of her father. Catalina lives in a remote mountain town […]
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham
Let’s distract ourselves from current disasters with even worse ones from the past, shall we? There are nor many single-event disasters with greater name recognition or cultural impact than the meltdown at Chernobyl—so much so, that it still shapes the zeitgeist around nuclear power 25 years after the event. Adam Higginbotham does an excellent job at detailing exactly how the world fell apart and the exact human cost. It certainly seemed like the end of the world for the town of Pripyat, which was built […]
