This House Is Haunted by John Coyne (Book Review)

(For those who have read my reviews in the past, I am changing the format. Hopefully it is an improvement. – Albert)
Story Summary –
In 1867, London, England, Eliza Cain and her ailing father attend a reading by Charles Dickens; her father’s literary favorite. It is a dreary and drizzling night, Eliza’s father falls seriously ill and perishes soon afterward.
Alone in the world for the first time Eliza leaves her teaching position and takes a job as a Governess at Gaudlin Hall in the township of Norfolk, England. The journey is filled with trepidation and hope until…
“…I stared at him in confusion and then looked back towards the place from which he had pulled me and sure enough the second train was screeching to a halt. Had I made another step forward I would have fallen beneath it and had been crushed to death. I felt faint at the idea.
“I didn’t mean to-” I began.
“Another moment and you would have been under it.”
“Someone pushed me,” I said, staring directly into his face. “A pair of hands. I felt them.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I was watching you. I could see which way you were going. There wasn’t anyone behind you…”
Arriving in Norfolk, Eliza is greeted by townspeople, but when they learn who she is and the position she is taking she cannot help but feel a chill building between them. The carriage takes her directly to Gaudlin Hall.
“…A moment later, the door opened and I turned, expecting at last to come face to face with my new employer, whoever he or she might be.
It was not a man or woman standing there, however, but a little girl. She was about twelve years old, I thought, older than my small girls, and very pale and pretty. Her hair was curled into ringlets that hung down to her shoulders and perhaps a little further. She was dressed in a white nightdress, fastened at the neck and hanging to her ankles, and as she stood there the candles in the hallway illuminating her from behind, she took on a spectral appearance that rather frightened me.
“Hello,” she said quietly.
“Good evening,” I replied, smiling, trying to put myself at ease by pretending that nothing was amiss. “I didn’t expect the door to be answered by the daughter of the house.”
“Oh no? Who did you expect to answer it then? The Prime Minister?”
“Well, the butler,” I said. “Or the maid.”
The little girl smiled. “We have fallen on diminished times,” she said after a long pause…
Eliza learns that beside herself, the home consists only of the two small children. The young girl, Isabella, who answered the door and her younger brother, Eustace. There is a cook who comes early in the morning to prepare the meals but leaves soon after they are prepared in the morning and the carriage driver who never enters the home. The parents of the home are nowhere to be seen.
Appalled at this arrangement, Eliza seeks out the solicitor who hired her. Then she learns of the truth of Gaudlin Hall. Of the deaths of the prior Governesses and the tragedy that befell the parents of young Isabella and Eustace. But what she learns more of, is that the townspeople of Norfolk do not know the true terror of Gaudlin Hall.
“…I don’t understand it, that’s the truth of it. Are we all animals under the skin, Miss Caine? Do we mask our baser instincts with fine words and clothes and decent behavior? They say that if we were to give way to our true desires we would, all of us, set upon each other with a lust for blood that has no equal in history…”
Eliza is left with a choice. Does she flee as the Governess before her? Does she stay and face the evil of Gaudlin Hall for the sake of the children? What does she do when all around no one will accept the malevolence that lives with her in Gaudlin Hall?
Book Review –
This House is Haunted by John Boyne is a admirable undertaking. There is no deception as to what this story is. The title alone makes it clear. Also beginning the tale with a Dickens reading set the tone and mood from the outset. Boyne lays all his literary cards on the table, face up, and still delivers an exceptionally well written ghost story.
Eliza Caine as the main character is perfect for her role. She is not a modern woman supplanted in the 1800s with a sense of independence and free thinking that makes her more than a match for all those around her. Instead Boyne has done the unthinkable. Eliza is actually a woman of her time. A woman who when faced with such evil finds the strength and fortitude to withstand the gale. When all around her, including other women, are putting her fears and witness down to overly sensitive reactions and exaggerations, she decided to act to protect the children left in her charge.
The story itself is powerful, with a sense of mood and foreboding that reminiscent of The House on Haunting Hill and The Woman In Black. Boyne is careful to maintain and create the setting of a dilapidated mansion in rural England falling down around itself. The sense of isolation is very strong even though Eliza makes several trips into Norfolk, you never get the sense she can go far. If not the ambience of being watched, then the knowledge that she cannot leave the children behind. The children themselves, though strong and willful, have an inherent vulnerability that is endearing. You want Eliza to free them from the hold of Gaudlin Hall. The townspeople, often well meaning, by their silence and fear feed the malevolence in Gaudlin Hall.
Boyne has written a ghost story with daring and simple honesty. It builds slowly until it plateaus, enveloping the reader, until there is only Gaudlin Hall and the darkness that thrives in it.
Final thought –
This House is Haunted is a chilling tale that harkens back to the ghost stories we grew up with. A very good read.

Purchase – <a href="This House is Haunted“>Amazon

The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry (Book Review)

The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry is very close to me declaring that this book is this season's Gone Girl. And that is very high praise indeed. The two person narrative is incredibly well executed, perhaps because Karen Perry is two different writers, and actually works to the flow of the novel.
The Innocent Sleep is the story of a young artistic married couple who lose their child one evening during an earthquake. The husband Harry is planning a special birthday dinner for his wife Robin. To ensure that they won't be disturbed, he does something he has done before. He gives their son Dillon, a drug to put him to sleep. As Dillon sleeps and Robin is not home as of yet, Harry steps out to retrieve a gift he had left at a friend's home. In the small window of time that Harry is gone, an earthquake hits and the home is destroyed. The small child Dillon is gone, his body never recovered.
What follows is the how Harry and Robin attempt to deal with the loss. As they try to go forward with their lives and yet live with the actions and circumstances that led to the loss of their son Dillon.

"...My sketches of Dillon were all dated. And I sat there sifting through the years, sifting through the hundreds of pencil drawings and charcoal impressions I had of the boy as he might have aged. The boy. Do you hear me? Call him what he was; my son..."

Then the unthinkable happens. The impossible. Five years after the earthquake and the loss of Dillon. While watching a march one morning; Harry spots a woman walking. A woman holding the hand of a young boy who looks exactly like what Dillon would have looked liked had he lived. Exactly like the charcoal drawings he had been doing. And just like that, Harry is convinced that Dillon lives.
Harry goes forward in search of his son. As the story unfolds we learn that Harry is the only one who had not accepted the loss of Dillon. But is it hope that Harry holds on to or guilt? It was after all Harry who had drugged the child and it was Harry who had left Dillon alone that night.
Robin struggles with the loss of her child and with the strength to hold her husband together. We learn of her pain and her desire to build a life and move forward.
But it is the secrets that this couple has that hold the truth to the story. Secrets about one another, about themselves and eventually about Dillon that threatened to destroy the thin fabric of their marriage and happiness.
The Innocent Sleep is a powerful tale of one couple's strength and the descent into madness of a father or his powerful reach for hope.

This is an excellent drama as well as a powerful mystery. There are twists and turns in this story that I will not share. I think that to enjoy a good book a reader must come upon these twists as the writer had intended and not in some blogger's review. But trust me they are there and you will not see them coming.
The Innocent Sleep will be one of those books this year that you will measure all others by.
A very good read.

Rose of Fire by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Short Story Reveiw)

The Rose of Fire by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a short story that takes place during the incarceration of David Martin, the tale of which is told in The Prisoner of Heaven. The other prisoners ask Martin to tell them a story and Martin tells them the origin of the labyrinthine library; the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

"...By the time a timid voice dared to suggest that a terrible punishment might fall upon them from Heaven to purge the vile act committed against the Jewish traders In Nomine Dei, it was too late. Nothing fell from Heaven except ash and dust. Evil, for once, arrived by sea..."

Fearing the fall of Constantinople, the Emperor Constantine enlists the aid of adventurer Edmond de Luna to carry a plan to build an extensive library to hide all the knowledge of the city in. The Rose of Fire is the tale of how Edmund de Luna carries the plan by shipwreck to the city of Barcelona and the tragedy and triumph that arrives from his adventure.

Any book or short story by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a cause for celebration. The writing is poetic and the prose rolls sweetly as if you were dining in a fine restaurant. The Rose of Fire is a quick bite of good writing and storytelling. As sweet and smooth as a cupcake when the time and effort for the entire cake simply won't do. It is also a wonderful introductory to Zafon's writing for any who have never read his work before.

A good read.

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-Mi Hwang (Book Review)

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-mi Hwang is a short tale from Korea that heralds back to the fables of our youth but with all the adult themes of an Orwellian novel. It is an intense and emotional story of loss and hope, the likes of which have not been written of in longer more adult books.
It is the story of Sprout, a egg laying hen who desires to raise a chick of her own. Unfortunately her existence is to lay the eggs that are gathered. The eggs slip directly into a chute and are carted away by the farmer.

"...Sprout was an egg-laying hen, which meant she was raised for her eggs. She had come to the coop over a year before. Since then, all she had done was lay eggs. She couldn't wander around, flap her wings, or even sit on her own eggs. She had never stepped outside the coop. But ever since she had seen a hen running around the yard with the adorable chicks she had hatched, Sprout had harbored a secret desire-to hatch an egg and watch the birth of her chick. But it was an impossible dream..."

Sprout decides that she cannot lay another egg. She cannot see another one of hers disappear from her. She refuses to eat and is then tossed into the refuse to die. Here she is saved by an outcast duck and together they begin a journey of hope and desperation played out in the barnyard and surrounding countryside.

I won't reveal much else about the story. There are layers upon layers of morality issues involved in the telling of this small tale. The desire of Sprout to be a mother is the powerful overriding theme. I understand in today's society that rejects motherhood as being something to aspire to; as being a step backward, that this fable may be fearful. But there is a big difference between choosing not to have a child and having that choice taken from you.
Sprout's rejection by all the other animals of the barnyard once she breaks free is also telling. She is a pariah because of her desire to not accept her place in the hierarchy of the barnyard. Her desire to be more than what this small group or society demands that she be causes her to be alienated and in some instances abused by those she thought would embrace her.
Sprout's journey and eventual opportunity to realize her dream comes in the end at a great price. A price she is more than willing to embrace.
This little hen is brave and strong in the face of overwhelming adversity. There is a great amount of hope in this little tale as well as the sadness of the story.
It is one, as a parent, you may wish to read to your child, after some careful editing.
A very good read.

The Island by Jen Minkman (Book Review)

The Island is a futuristic novella by Jen Minkman that has the ability to borrow from several different predecessors yet be unique enough to create a world of its own. Minkman creates a world in the not too distant future where the bonds of family are broken by ritual and the gap between children and parents severed by the society they live in.

"...I go my own way," I say softly. The words that every child utters at age ten - the words my brother will say after me today - don't sound as if I'm sure of them. But I am, because I know this is right. I clear my throat and speak up. "I stand on my own two feet. No one takes care of me but me..."

With those words the children leave their homes and their family and travel to the Manor where they will be taught to stand on their own and depend on no one. It is a brutal place run by a young dictator named Saul. In this setting a very Lord of The Flies existence is prevalent. Separated from their parents the children learn that they alone can provide and care for themselves.

"...In front of me right now is a different kind of book that I've read many times as well. A book containing imaginative stories called 'fairytales'. Even in a fantasy world, parents are not to be trusted - the stories of Snow White and Cinderella make that perfectly clear. The mothers in those tales didn't love their children either..."

In this isolated world the children are taught from a book, a tale of a brother and sister who fight against the greatest evil represented by their father. Here the children are learning that perhaps a greater evil is coming from within.

The Island was slow in some parts but well paced. Do not be dissuaded by the Star Wars references, this is not about Star Wars. If anything Minkman has used the pop culture sensation of Star Wars to show how much the current media; entertainment and otherwise, has such a strong impact on the children of today.
If a ten year old was removed from his parents and isolated, what would he really know of the world? What would he retain most of his past? Would it not be the Television and Movie shows; video games as well, that they spend so much of their early lives with? And do not most of these tales teach children that adults are not to be trusted? Or at the least are to stupid and self-involved to be of any help at all?
The Island is a well written dystopian story and as the best of that genre does, has a very well crafted comment on the society of today.
A very good read.

The Dark Heroine: Dinner With A Vampire by Abigail Gibbs (Book Review)

The promo for this book says that this is the sexiest romance I will read all year. If so, I am in for a really disappointing year in the sex and romance department. I found the book to be typical of its genre and the characters easily found in every other book of its kind. I was ready to stop reading it at several junctions of the novel but held on just so I could list it as read.
Dinner With A Vampire is a unique title since the story has little to do with just having dinner with a vampire. The heroine, a teenage girl full of angst who has recently lost a family member and is rebelling from her powerful and domineering father; witnesses a bloodbath of murder between humans and vampires and instead of killing the lone witness to the massacre the vampires decide to take her hostage. She is held hostage for months and I guess somewhere in there she actually does have dinner with the family of vampires that took her so ties in to the title.
Violet, the young teenage girl, who despite witnesses the carnage of thirty or so humans being torn apart by a family of vampires and then being taken hostage by them; remains incredibly brave and snarky. Insulting them as only a teenager could. In time she of course, finds the prince, Kaspar, way too sexy to resist.
Kaspar is a angry, violent vampire who manhandles Violet often in the early parts of the novel, constantly threatening her with pain and rape. That may be the sexy romantic part. But of course he is hurt by the loss of his own loved one and that is the reason why he is so angry and violent.
Isn't this sort of the reasoning many women use when they stay in an abusive relationship? Yes he treats me bad and says terrible things to me, but deep down he is a good person and in so much pain....
Abigail Gibbs is ambitious in this novel, I will happily say this. Not only are there vampires, but she created a total hierarchy for them. With several families and the politics of how they exist with the human world. Not only this but there are other dimensions and portals between them and somehow, in all this there is a prophecy of hope and doom that will make all these worlds collide.
Ambitious and not badly written.
In truth, my main issue with the book is that I really found the two main characters; Violet and Kaspar, really really annoying. I could only imagine how much more enjoyable the book would have been without them.
Which leaves with a conflict. While I did not care for this book, the next in the series; Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel looks very interesting. Gibbs introduces Autumn Rose toward the end of this book and the character and the mythos that are created around her are very interesting. Hopefully Violet and Kaspar will play little in this one and I will enjoy it much more.

By Blood We Live by Glen Duncan (Book Review)

By Blood We Live by Glen Duncan is the third book in the series that began with The Last Werewolf and was followed by Talulla Rising. These novels are not your usual fare of werewolves and vampires and teen romance. These are visceral and bloody. The romance fast and hot and saturated in animalistic lust. In the first novel, a philosophical Jake, believing himself to be the final living werewolf struggles to survive as he is hunted by vampire and humans alike. In his final acts he brings forth a new line of wolves led by his lover Talulla. She in turn must protect her new pack, with her two twin babies in toll, as she tries to learn in a short time what Jake had known for hundreds of years.
Now, with Jake gone and a new enemy in a military arm of the church, Talulla must find a safe place for her pack and werewolf cubs. But also come to terms with the dreams that haunt her. Dreams of a vampire and the lost love between them. The vampire known as Remshi, thought to be the oldest vampire left alive. For Remshi, he is in search of his lost lover Vali, who he has come to believe is Talulla brought back to life.

"...I sucked hard, went wholly seduced-went wantonly into the drink. If the soul was immortal it left its memories behind in the blood, shed consciousness and passed on, naked and pure, to the realm beyond the image and word, to be wrangled over by God and the Devil, or to reach final dissolution in the void. But I didn't need the soul. Only the blood. Always and always and always the blood. I drank and felt the rhythm of the drinking in my eyelids and fingertips and nipples and feet. I drank and swam down..."

Duncan paces the novel extremely well, his cadence a poetic dance even when the beast is tearing you piece by piece and chewing on the gristle of your flesh. Yet there is a vulnerability to these immortal and cruel beasts. As they themselves struggle with what they are.

"...I was remembering something Fluff had said. He was always teasing me about not reading books, but one day he said: Reading a book is a dangerous thing, Justine. A book can make you find room in yourself for something you never thought you'd understand. Or worse, something you never wanted to understand..."

Talulla is offered a reprieve from her life. If not for her, perhaps her children. A cure. A chance to be human again if she would only do the most inhuman of acts. But would the wolf in her allow her to do so? And what of Remshi and his prophecy that only by being with Talulla would he find his way back to Vali?
Duncan weaves an intricate tale of love lost and survival in peril. The choices made and the fate of all touched by them. This is old style horror with Werewolves written the way they should be. With the wolf being the more powerful side, not the human.
An excellent addition to a very well written series.

The Reflections of Queen Snow White by David Meredith (Book Review)

I'm not sure what I expected when I received The Reflections of Queen Snow White by David C Meredith but I must say that this was a creative and courageous surprise. An intense and detailed take on the Snow White legend and the aftermath. What happens when happily ever after comes to an end?

"...The Queen looked away from Erfreut to hide her tears. Maybe it was because back then it had always been talk of 'what if' and 'someday'. The reality of his passing had proven far more difficult than anything she had ever even imagined before. She felt so alone, so positively abandoned.
Her steward did not fail to notice his queen's distress. He ordered the guards to leave and in less than a second was at her side. Erfreut took her tiny white hand gently in his own rough, brown paw. The mantle of councilor fell from his voice and posture like a discarded cloak might have fallen from his shoulders.
"What is it, Snowy?" The elderly little dwarf asked gently..."

It is years since Snow White and Prince Charming married and as their young child Raven prepares for her own wedding, Snow White is wrapped up in her own grief. The mourning for the loss of her prince and husband Charming, having passed away a year before. Snow White is utterly desolate, all her friends have also passed and only the youngest of the dwarves remains. In her sadness it is difficult to even muster the strength to share in her daughter's happiness.
To get away from everyone she climbs a long forgotten tower in her castle. The tower that once belonged to evil stepmother Arglist, the tormentor of her childhood. Inside her stepmother's bedroom, Snow White finds a sheet hanging against the wall. Behind the sheet she discovers a mirror.

"...I am a mirror," the mirror repeated. "All I can do is reflect that which is already within you. Everything you see is already a part of you. Were that not so, I could not show it..."

It is here, before the mirror her stepmother used to find and hunt her, Snow White confronts the truth of her marriage and her grief. It is here, in reflection, that Snow White tells the tale of her life, from abused child, to found princess, to regal queen and finally to lost widow of a loved Prince Charming.

The Reflections of Snow White is very well written and tells the tale of Snow White much darker and realistic than what we grew up with. The pain and suffering the child that was Snow White and her recovery from the near death poisoning is far more plausible than a Disney watered down story. Snow White's struggle to trust the love of her Prince Charming after her years of abuse and then to lose that love while she is still a young woman nearly destroys her. It is only through introspection that she is able to come to terms with the grief.
Happily ever after is not as it seems but still attainable for Snow White.
An excellent read.

The Descent (Book 3 of The Takers) by Alma Katsu - Book Review

The Descent, which is book three of The Taker series by Alma Katsu completes the tale of Lanore McIlvare, the young beautiful farm girl bestowed with the gift of immortality. In this final chapter Lanore is in mourning from burying her mortal lover Luke when she is tortured with dreams of her first love Jonathan, whom she turned into an immortal herself and then killed to release him. Jonathan is trapped in the underworld, a kind of purgatory, where he is being beaten and brutalized. Lanore knows she must save him and the only person who can help her do so is her maker, Adair.

The relationship between Lanore and Adair has always been a turbulent one. From his dominance and keeping of her to her sealing him in a brick tomb for decades. But only Adair possesses the ability to send Lanore into the Underworld to help Jonathan and then have the power to bring her back.

What Katsu does so well in these novels, and is so powerful here in the third book, is probe the relationship her immortal characters have not with one another, but with themselves. With their own immortality.

"...It seemed the immortality-rather than make me more sensitive to the pain of losing a loved one-had robbed me of the ability to feel real emotion in the face of death. When my lovers and friends died, my feelings were always muted and distant. I'm not sure why this was. It might have been to protect me from being swamped by grief, so I wouldn't relive the sadness I'd felt for each of the people I'd lost over the course of my life. Or maybe it was because I knew from experience that, soon enough, another person would come along and-if not take Luke's place, not exactly-at least distract me form missing him. Because I had no choice but to live on and on..."

Lanore finds Adair on his hidden island but Adair is different. Subdued. No longer the arrogant and powerful being who had given her an eternal life but someone else. More man than monster now. The attraction between them is great and at first Adair is reluctant to help Lanore out, but after extracting her promise to return, he relents.
In the Underworld Lanore finds more than she was prepared for. Past friends and companions each serving a sentence of pain and regret to the Queen of the Underworld.

"...Sophia, is that your baby?" I asked carefully, my stomach tightening.
"Yes, a girl," she said but offered no name.
"May I hold her?"
She shot me a contemptuous look but, tentatively, she held the child out to me. She was still in my arms and too heavy for her size, like a sodden bundle of wash. With trepidation, I lifted the corner of blanket covering the baby's face, steeled for something horrific. There was a neatly swaddled infant inside, but whether she was alive or dead was impossible to tell. The baby didn't seem to breathe and yet here was a whisper of animation to her, a pulse behind the eyelids, a slight tremor at the corner of her mouth. Her skin was the strangest color, a pale gray-blue as though she had stopped breathing-or because she had never breathed.
Poor Sophia. This had been her punishment for taking her life while her unborn child was still inside her: to carry the baby with her for eternity and never to see it wake up. She could not put her down, she couldn't bury her and be done with it. She was doomed to be forever hopeful that the baby might open her eyes and look at her, but to know in her heart that she never would..."

In the Underworld she learns the secrets behind Adair and the lie that Jonathan is. She learns that the one love left in her is for the immortal she feared and hated most at one time. And the one she loved as well.
Adair and Lanore, are they able to become as Hades and Persephone before them?
The Descent moves smoothly, but unlike the two prior books in the Taker series, the Descent is much more of a love story and it is the love story that is realized between Adair and Lanore that is center to the novel.

A Cold Season - Alison Littlewood (Book Review)

A Cold Season by Alison Littlewood is a supernatural thriller set in a small English village of Darnshaw. Cass and her young son Ben are putting their lives back together after the death of her husband in the war. Cass sees the opportunity to return to Darnshaw, the village she spent some of her childhood in though the memories are remarkably fuzzy, and decides to return to enjoy the quieter life.
"...You need to give it a chance. I loved it when I was your age." Even as she said the words, Cass found herself wondering if that was true. And yet when she had heard the name Darnshaw again, she had pictured Ben here, running around the hills and laughing. Enjoying an idyllic childhood, everything she wanted to give him..."
   As Cass settles into the village she begins to remember bits and pieces of her own past and the turbulent relationship with her own father. A father she felt abandoned her but which we later find out had left her and her mother to join the priesthood. With her own sense of loss she tries to comfort her young son Ben.
   Darnshaw is surrounded by a dense fog and as a wintry storm blows in is covered by snow. Communication with the outside world is down and Cass is left to with her new friends, Sally, Lucy and Ben's school teacher Mr. Remick. But slowly Darnshaw becomes something different. The past she had blocked out seeps back in. A history of murders and witchcraft and maybe something even worse. But what really changes for Cass is Ben. From a sad little boy into an angry, hateful and violent child.
"...Perhaps it was best to leave him alone for a while, let him calm down. She bent and switched on the nightlight. It cast a pallid glow over the room.
   Ben shuffled around. His hand snaked from under the covers and snapped off the light. "I don't need it anymore," he said, snuggling back under the blanket.
   Cass drew a deep breath, then turned and closed the door behind her, leaving her son in darkness..."
   Cut off from the rest of the world, Cass begins to piece together the secrets of Darnshaw, her past and the true identity of Mr. Remick. She knows that the changes in Ben are not natural and to save her son, she must find a way out of the isolated and snow blocked village.
   Cold Season is told in layers. The characters of Cass and Ben are built bit by bit and the loss of her husband is acutely told. They are weakened and flawed and desperate for some stability and strength to return to their lives. This makes them easy prey for the presence in Darnshaw. Cass's own relationship with her father leaves her vulnerable to be taken in. The village and the people in it are well characterized developed. You are drawn in and as the secrets unravel, you are not really sure if the evil Cass is beginning to sense is real or is she simply going mad.
   Cold Season is a good story. Well written and delivered. The problem with it is I've read it before. A single mom or abandoned mom and child. Isolated by some natural event, unable to communicate with the outside world. A man who may or not be a friend who may or may not become a murderer. An evil presence or just going stir crazy. The Shining is the best example of this but I've read many other variations of this tale. In the worst of them the plotting is so slow you can literally walk away. In the best, you begin to feel just as isolated as the characters in the book. You can get a chill from the winter storm and the sense of isolated is so heavy, you need to take a deep breath because you swear you were held underwater for a moment.
   Its a tried and true formula in horror and thriller novels. I find nothing wrong with using it. Only with the Cold Season there isn't anything else brought to the table. There is a hint of witches or a coven but are they really? The identity of Mr. Remick is hinted at but not really made clear. There is an abandoned church and a book with names written in blood and a rumor of ritualistic child sacrifice but it doesn't really ever come about.
   The one plot twist that I had really had with the book and this is a spoiler so stop or skip this paragraph if you want. The issue I take with it is throughout the novel Cass is fighting this madness of hers or real evil she feels is out there herself to save Ben. Toward the end two characters, though not new but never really in the village at all appear and it is they who eventually save Cass and Ben. And they're men. So much for the strong woman/mother saving her child in the face of great evil.
   Sorry but that bothered me.
   Overall it is a good story. But much too formula driven. Alison Littlewood has the recipe to make a good story, but now she needs to add her own little spices and sweets to make it her own.

A Fatal Likeness by Lynn Shepherd (Book Review)

I have to say that A Fatal Likeness is a huge step backward from A Solitary House, Lynn Shepherd's previous novel with young detective Charles Maddox.
It is too bad as the subject matter; Percy Bysshe Shelly, his wife Mary Shelly (the author of Frankenstein) and her step sister Claire Clairmont and the lover's triangle they created was ripe for a good mystery.
But in Shepherd's hands the plot is slowly revealed and the writing sluggish at best. It feels much more like an attack on the lives of Shelley and the two women than an attempt at writing a true mystery.
Shelley is presented as a man-child, selfish and petulant. At times mentally unstable. Mary is a cruel and dangerous woman. Claire, at times playing the innocent is also portrayed as a vindictive and selfish woman who will stop at nothing to destroy her sister's marriage and steal her husband. At the center of it all are the deaths of their children. Shepherd would have us believe that Shelley and his women murdered their own children in pitiful fits of selfishness.
Shepherd has researched her subjects meticulously. In fact a good third of the book is dedicated to the notes she has taken on the subjects. In effect, this novel comes off as more of a high school literary thesis than a mystery novel.
Perhaps that is what I found so dislikable about it. It lacked story. And for a novelist that is a most unforgivable sin.

The Reason I Jump - Naoki Higashida (Book Review)

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida is an interesting glimpse inside the mind and life of this young child. While I cannot say that the book itself is insightful; it is in other ways a touch of the simplicity that offers instead a sense of wonder at the world so many of us cannot comprehend.

"...The thirteen-year-old author of this book invites you, his reader, to imagine a daily life in which your faculty of speech is taken away. Explaining that you're hungry, or tired, or in pain, is now as beyond your powers as a chat with a friend..."

I read this book hoping for some great insight into the world of an autistic child. Into the world a family with such a child must live in. In this, the book does fail. There really is not a-ha moment for those of us outside this world. Instead the book is written in a series of questions to Naoki that he answers. His replies to such questions as; Why do you speak in that peculiar way? Or; Do you have a sense of time? Are basic and simplistic. Much as should be expected from a young boy of thirteen.

"...When I was small, I didn't even know that I was a kid with special needs. How did I find out? By other people telling me that I was different from everyone else, and that this was a problem..."

This statement in the early part of the book is very revealing. Naoki struggled to adapt to our world and his failings in doing so are acutely felt. In reading the book I found the questions themselves, asked of Naoki to be disturbing. They were less about his struggles with being an autistic child and so much more about how his autism inconveniences the rest of us.

Why can't you have a proper conversation?
Why do you do things the rest of us don't?
Why do you ask the same questions over and over?
Why do you make a huge fuss over tiny mistakes?

Consider for a moment, if these questions were asked of any child, let alone a child with autism. We would consider them cruel. Yet to ask these of a autistic child is somehow okay. Because these are the things about the child that bother the rest of us.
I began this book hoping to find an insight into the world of an autistic but came away instead with an insight into the rest of us. A picture that is not becoming.
Read this book and perhaps it will change how you look at a child with autism the next time they start to make a fuss in your presence.

Starter House by Donja Condit (Book Review)

I need to begin this review by admitting that I LOVE A GOOD GHOST STORY! Ghost stories are the oldest and best form of entertainment there is. Huddled around a campfire, hanging at a bar or ancient man in a cave; we told ghost stories. Right now, in the literary market, there are too few good ones to go around. What there are instead are far too many - teenage girl who is a sophomore in high school so she is so wise finds something odd in the old house and yes its a dead teenage boy and he's soooooo cute and they find that love that is forbidden but soooooo romantic and....crap, crap, crap.
The Starter House by Sonja Condit is an old school ghost story with a twist at the end that is as novel as it is groundbreaking. Sonja Condit did not just write another haunted house story, she wrote her own haunted house story. It is unique and refreshing in a stale genre.

"...Is there something wrong with the house?" Eric asked again. Lacey wished he wouldn't. The house was obviously perfect. They could deal with anything-termites, mold, radon-but they could never make an ugly house their true home.
"Yes," Harry said to CarolAnna, "is there?"
"CarolAnna licked her lips, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at the bathtub on the porch and said to it, "People died here."
"People die everywhere," Lacey said, though the words gave her a shiver. Poor house no wonder it was lonely..."

Eric and Lacey are a young couple beginning their lives together and starting a family. Lacey is pregnant and waiting to have their baby as Eric takes a job working in a law firm for his uncle. Money is very tight and that is something Eric is not used to. They find a home that Lacey loves and Eric thinks is a steal. It is their Starter House.
Soon after moving in Lacey meets a troubled young boy. It is only in time that she realizes, no one else can see him. She begins to research the history of the boy and the house and finds out that more than one instance of death has been associated with her new home. And that there is something even more troubling about the deaths.

"...I'm pregnant, Lacey said. "Twenty-nine weeks."
"How've you kept it so long?" This question took Lacey's breath away. Greeley went on, " I did some research on the house after we moved. There hasn't been a live baby born in that house since 1972. He doesn't like babies."
Madison Grey had known the truth. It eats babies, she'd said. That meant Drew, when he was angry. Lacey saw Ella Dane's room smashed. That could be her baby's room, six months from now. Stuffed animals shredded, cardboard books exploded in confetti, slats of the crib driven like spears into the walls. The corner of a blue blanket showing under the overturned body of the crib-blue satin turning red. And silence..."

Lacey begins to track down all the past residents of her home and one truth is shared by all. The young boy Lacey has met is haunting her house and will not share his new family with any other children. He wants Lacey to be his new mother.
There is so much more to this novel than my brief synopsis will tell but to add more to it would be spoiling the enjoyment of reading Starter House and coming upon them yourselves. Condit starts the tale off slowly and builds and builds, carefully twisting and turning so that what you think is coming is not. What you think is happening is not until she reveals it all toward the end. Wonderfully crafted and a thoroughly enjoyable read.