brightbeautifulthings
bright, beautiful things
"I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That's all. The rest is confetti."
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Her heart stopped. For over a minute. She died […], then she came back. The doctors don’t know how. They say it’s a miracle.
STRANGER THINGS 4
S04E09 | “The Piggyback”
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The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
"Spoken like a person so rich she can't imagine the weight of problems money can solve."
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 4/5
About: Avery Grambs is living in her car when she gets an invitation to the reading of a will for Tobias Hawthorne, a billionaire she's never met in her life. Why Hawthorne would leave her his fortune is as much a mystery to her as it is to his many furious family members, who now feel cheated out of their inheritance. The catch is that Avery must live with them at Hawthorne House for a year in order to get her money. Tobias's grandson, Jameson, is convinced that the will is a final puzzle from a master gamemaker, but somebody may be playing for blood… Trigger warnings: parent death, classism, manipulation, grief.
Thoughts: This is pretty standard for Jennifer Lynn Barnes, in a good way. I enjoyed her Debutantes and The Naturals series quite a bit, and fans of those will find a lot to like about this (and vice versa). Indeed, it's a little hard to tell Swayer, Cassie, and Avery--the main characters of each series--apart. They're all girls who come from nothing, have complicated relationships with their mothers, and rely on their intellect to get by. Since I very much enjoy this kind of main character, I'm fine with that. I like reading about girls who are smart about things I'll never be smart about.
Truthfully, the mystery fell a bit to the wayside in this one for me. While it's fun to watch Avery and the Hawthornes work their way through the clues, I don't know that the reader (or Avery) ever has all the necessary information required to figure anything out on our own. It means we're more along for the ride than active participants in the game, and it's far more interesting trying to puzzle out the various personalities of the Hawthorne family. There are lot of fascinating main and side characters, and I was never bored. While there's enough thematic closure to be satisfying, it's clear the game is still afoot for the next books.
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Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp
"'It doesn't have to be a happily ever after or happily always. Just a happily once. A happily sometimes. Hope. That'd make our pain worth it.'"
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 3/5
About: Best friends Corey and Kyra grew up together in the small town of Lost Creek, Alaska. When Corey moves away for school, Kyra promises to wait for her return, but just days before her visit, Kyra is found dead beneath the ice. Skeptical that her death was an accident or a suicide, Corey returns to Lost to look for answers, only to find herself ostracized by the town she used to call home. The more secrets she uncovers, the darker the picture of Kyra's last months in Lost, and the more Corey realizes her own life might be in danger. Trigger warnings: character death, suicide, suicidal ideation, abuse, drowning, fire, untreated mental illness, neglect, threats.
Thoughts: I don't know if I would classify this as a mystery/thriller so much as a contemporary drama. While the stakes and tension ramp up toward the end, the novel as a whole is a lot more introspective. It's by no means fast-paced, and I think it's actually a little long for what it is. There's a lot of Corey wandering around Lost Creek, noticing weird things, and reflecting on her friendship with Kyra. The sense of place is strong, and I really felt like we were in Lost, cold and isolated and vaguely threatening. While I enjoyed the message, it's occasionally beaten to death that Corey is an outsider now and this town abused a mentally ill girl.
But it is a powerful message. There's some ambiguity about whether Kyra was actually a prophet or whether she was simply good at observing and the town just interpreted her art that way. While I generally prefer more answers in my fiction, I think that works here. It ultimately doesn't matter whether the magic is real or not. What matters is that Kyra was in desperate need of doctors and medication, and the town denied her treatment to serve their own selfish interests. It's horrifying because it's not hard to imagine it happening in any small town anywhere, and I think the novel's haunting atmosphere will stay with me longer than the details of the plot.
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Heads Will Roll by Josh Winning
"'Listen,' she says, 'this is the best piece of advice I can give. As long as you're kind, and unprejudiced, and haven't hurt anybody: Refuse. To. Be. Ashamed. Wear your mistakes with pride. Look them in the eye and own your space on this Earth. Own it shamelessly, without regret, and no fucker has any power over you.'"
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 3/5
About: After a fateful Tweet that went viral in the worst way, Willow's life is falling apart. She's been fired from her sitcom, her fiancé's left, and the internet as a whole is calling for her head. A retreat to Camp Castaway, where adults who want to put their mistakes behind them and disconnect from their phones, comes at the perfect moment. But Camp Castaway hides a dark history, and when campers start to go missing, it's clear someone wants to cancel all of them… for good. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Penguin/Putnam. Trigger warnings: character death (on page, graphic), decapitation, child abuse, gore, cancer, severe injury, addiction, homophobia (countered), strong religious themes, bullying.
Thoughts: This is a perfectly fine adult slasher novel and a nice addition to the genre. Winning doesn't skimp on the gore or the body count, and, not surprisingly, the horror scenes were my favorite parts. They're nicely cinematic and well-paced, as well as a loving (bloody) homage to slasher films of days gone by. There are a couple of powerhouse Final Girls as well, and I especially loved Juniper as the aged, tough Final Girl who takes no shit and offers wisdom to the younger generation. It's harder to get a read on Willow since she's having a bit of an identity crisis, but she's a worthy heroine who always tries to help her fellow campers, even before the heads are rolling. There's also a sweet but complicated wlw romance, representation that still isn't as prevalent in horror as I'd hope.
One of my favorite things about horror and what basically cemented my love for George Romero movies in high school is horror's natural ability to be a vehicle for social commentary. Winning targets cancel culture with Head Will Roll, and one has the sense many influencers would rather be chased through the woods by an ax murderer than be "canceled" on Instagram. Not being much of a social media person myself, it's not an issue that particularly resonates with me, but it's nicely developed throughout the novel. Occasionally, I did feel like the issue was overshadowing the story and the horror a bit, but had I connected more to it, I might not have felt that way. All in all, it's fun, gruesome, and meaningful, as horror should be.
#book review#heads will roll#josh winning#horror#adult ficiton#3/5#rating: 3/5#putnam#netgalley#2024
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The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones
"I used to be all about the final girl standing on top of a pile of the dead at the end of the movie, her face dripping blood, her chest heaving, her eyes fierce. Now I'm all about holding the door of the slasher-proof shelter open, so everybody can duck in, ride this out."
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 4/5
Thoughts: I put this off for a bit because I wasn't ready for the trilogy to be over, and I'm pretty emotional about this horrific, blood-drenched, heartfelt series as a whole--which honestly tells you a lot about me and it. Fans of the first two books will find plenty to love about it, and the character development for Jade throughout the series is really good. I adore her as a main character and a final girl. She's the beating, bloody heart of these books, and I'm excited that she'll live on in slasher history for girls to look up to and see themselves in and celebrate alongside Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott as peak examples for the genre. There's a lot of her trying to manage her own trauma in this book, which typically isn't something we get to see a lot of in horror. While I felt the narrative was tighter in Don't Fear the Reaper, this one falls back into some of the habits of My Heart Is a Chainsaw, where it sometimes feels like we get a bit lost in her internal monologue at the expense of what's happening. It feels intentional--the very real consequences of a trauma spiral--but as a spectator it's occasionally frustrating.
It's up there with the first two books as far as gore and body count, and I enjoy the fact that no matter how much I know I'm in a slasher, I'm still surprised when the violence explodes out of nowhere from the least expected directions. Jones has a talent for dreaming up horrific mass death scenes, usually not once but several times in a book. The killers are a little all over the place in this one, no looming specter of Dark Mill South to ground the book, but I think it works. It dips into some seriously dark territory at one point, but I like the way it's all pulled together by the end, the lore of previous books coming back to shape this one. While Don't Fear the Reaper is still my favorite (weird, right? way to go all Catching Fire with it), I enjoyed the series a lot overall and will be glad to return to Jade and Proofrock in future rereads. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Saga Press.
#book review#the angel of indian lake#indian lake trilogy#stephen graham jones#horror#horror fiction
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House of Roots and Ruin by Erin A. Craig
"This house has always felt full of ghosts to me--not of spirits in white sheets and chains, nothing as cliched as all that--but of memories snatched away. Memories I'll never be able to claim as mine."
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 3/5
Flash Book Review: Atmosphere & Insta-Love
About: Verity is the youngest of the Thaumas sisters. After tragedy took so much of their family, her oldest sister, Camille, has kept her close at the Highmoor estate, but Verity longs for her own life to start. When she receives an invitation from the Duchess of Bloem to paint a portrait of her son, Alexander, Verity flees Highmoor without permission, afraid to see her life pass her by. She's instantly charmed by the beauty of Bloem and its kind future duke, but there are dark secrets beneath the surface of Chauntilalie estate. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Random House/Delacorte Press. Trigger warnings: character death (on page), child/parent death, poisoning, fire, violence, severe injury, ableism (countered).
Thoughts: This has a lot in common with House of Salt and Sorrows, as in, it's still recognizably Craig, an atmospheric mix of horror, fantasy, and mystery, with a strong dose of flawless romantic love interests. I think the difference for me came down in the kind of atmosphere. Whereas the first book had spooky ghosts and an ocean aesthetic, this one has lush gardens, plants, and mad science. I'm a ghost girl, not a flower girl, so it's fairly easy to see why I didn't really vibe with this, but that's going to vary from reader to reader. After the initial chilling twist (which, having now read the description, I realize is not actually a twist), most of the ghosts turn out to be helpful rather than spooky.
The plot is a little slow-moving, and there are points where it seems like we're floundering around in the same clues, all of which lead to a pretty obvious conclusion. I do enjoy Craig's flowery (in this case literally) descriptions and the rich cultural fantasy worlds she creates without ever bogging us down in world-building details. I don't find the People of the Petals as interesting as the People of the Salt, but again, that's just a personal preference. Verity is a more naive heroine than Annaleigh, but they're both ruled by their kindness. (In fact, I'm finding it a little difficult to tell Craig's leading ladies apart, if we're also including Small Favors.)
What really threatened the book for me is the romance. While I sometimes enjoy romance as a genre, I tend to not like it as well in my fantasy, and there's just so much of it here. The two leads have an instant connection that's very deep as well as sappy (I'm sorry, don't mind my aro heart), and Verity's instant devotion makes me want to shake her. Girl, you just met him five minutes ago, and you've barely even spoken to another man before this. While I appreciate a disabled love interest (Alex uses a wheelchair after a childhood accident left him paralyzed from the waist down), we're practically beaten over the head with his goodness. Let the man have a flaw. The ending seems to be going for shock value more than logic, and while I didn't love it, I'm interested to see how the consequences play out in the third book.
#book review#house of roots and ruin#erin a craig#sisters of the salt#ya fantasy#ya paranormal#delacorte press#random house#netgalley#3/5#rating: 3/5#2024
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“Fairy tales are more than moral lessons and time capsules for cultural commentary; they are natural law. The child raised on folklore will quickly learn the rules of crossroads and lakes, mirrors and mushroom rings. They’ll never eat or drink of a strange harvest or insult an old woman or fritter away their name as though there’s no power in it. They’ll never underestimate the youngest son or touch anyone’s hairpin or rosebush or bed without asking, and their steps through the woods will be light and unpresumptuous. Little ones who seek out fairy tales are taught to be shrewd and courteous citizens of the seen world, just in case the unseen one ever bleeds over.”
— S.T. Gibson (via sarahtaylorgibson)
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They would’ve loved him. Even in the end, he never stopped being Eddie, despite everything.
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“May I present my esteemed travelling companion, former cartographer and sometimes Saint: Alina Starkov.”
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Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee
"Grief has a way of sneaking up on you when you're least expecting it. A song, a phrase, a scent ... then you're falling into an empty space inside that you thought you'd patched. That you thought could bear the weight."
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 3/5
About: Dylan is determined to win the Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake competition to help save his aunt's failing Chinese takeout. He doesn't have time to fall for someone like Theo, a rich, handsome customer who's worlds apart. When Theo convinces Dylan to be his fake date at an elaborate wedding in the Hamptons, there are sparks of real feelings-- but Theo's distant father will do anything to keep them apart. Trigger warnings: parent death, cancer, drowning, classism.
Thoughts: I was looking for an easy, fluffy queer romance, and that's exactly what I got with this book. There aren't a lot of twists or surprises, nor does there need to be, just a handful of cute tropes popular to romance novels and fanfiction: fake dating (obviously), bed sharing, miscommunication, grand gestures, etc. The writing is passable but doesn't stand out, and despite its short length, the pacing is a bit slow at times, with more focus on what the characters are wearing than advancing the plot. Everything is wrapped up a little too neat and quick at the end, but I'm not going to complain about the happiest possible ending.
The characters are pleasant enough, and Dylan feels quite well-rounded with his dedication to his family and the takeout, his grief over losing his mother, and his goal of perfecting his grandmother's lost mooncake recipe. Theo is a bit blander as the handsome, charming rich boy with daddy issues, but I tend to let that go in LGBTQ+ romances. They deserve all the wish-fulfillment of straight romances. My favorite part of the novel was the crash course in Chinese culture and cuisine we get from Dylan, and it's a lot of fun learning about the different traditions and daydreaming about tasting mooncakes. Fans of the genre will find a lot to like about it.
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Alone by Cyn Balog
"This place is like a snow globe, trapping me inside. And I am drowning here."
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 2/5
About: Seda's mother inherited a crumbling, isolated mansion that used to host murder mystery parties, so she's been living in a literal house of horror for months, dreaming of her life going on without her back home. When a snowstorm strands a handful of teenagers with them, Seda knows it's a terrible idea to let them stay. Something dangerous lurks inside the house, and inside herself… Trigger warnings: parent death, sibling/twin death, potential DID/mental illness, some gore, mild body horror, injury, threats.
Thoughts: I think this is slightly mismarketed as a YA novel because it reads like a Goosebumps book exposed to gamma radiation, complete with eye-rolling cliffhangers at the end of every chapter that typically turn out to be nothing and an equally ridiculous "twist" ending. It's right on that border between middle grade and YA, and I can't say it worked well for me as an adult at all. I was either bored or aggravated through all of it, and the only thing that pushed me through it was wanting to know what was going on-- sorry I did.
Seda is a very standard YA heroine, and aside from her flaky mother, the rest of the characters are cutouts of Family or Love Interest or Jealous Ex. Her narration is largely full of worry over her dead twin brother Sawyer's voice taking over her body (a thread that is never played out to any satisfaction), and pointless repetitions that Something Bad Is Going To Happen. I suspect it's meant to build tension and create an atmosphere of dread, but since nothing bad really happens for 2/3 of the novel, it falls pretty flat. I might have enjoyed the ending if it didn't require abrupt changes in characterization and abandoning half the build-up. The whole thing comes over feeling half-baked at best.
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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
"It's only in books people carry revolvers around as a matter of course."
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 3/5
Thoughts: Somehow, I made it into adulthood without ever reading an Agatha Christie novel, so this is my first (although I've been enjoying the Kenneth Branagh movies). It's easy to see why it became a classic and why so many mysteries after have taken inspiration from it. I felt as though I already knew the basics of the plot even before I got into it, and the mystery is nicely creepy with the disappearing figures and rising suspicions.
I find the title change a little hilarious since, while it's kinder and more socially conscious than Ten Little Indians, my edition doesn't do anything more to erase the word "Indian" from this story. It's the name of the island, in the poem framed in every guest room, the figures on the table, and even predicts the manner of the deaths. I suppose the publishers meant well, but it ultimately feels like a meaningless gesture toward political correctness without any attempt to address the actual racism. In that respect, the novel does come over a bit dated, and there are a handful of misogynistic comments from the male characters as well.
The characters are interesting in their diverse and shadowed backgrounds, although I wouldn't say any of them are exactly sympathetic. The whole point of them being on the island is that they've potentially done something terrible, with varying levels of remorse. I enjoyed trying to guess who would die next and how based on the clues in the poem, but I didn't guess the killer. I'm not sure we could, given the information that we have available about the characters (which isn't a whole lot), but the killer's reveal and their methods are fun. I didn't love it, but I'm glad I read it.
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Sweet Valley High: What Jessica Wants by Francine Pascal
"'That poor guy doesn't stand a chance against her. After all, what Jessica wants, Jessica gets.'"
Year Read: before 2006, 2024
Rating: 3/5
Thoughts: I loved this series growing up. Returning to it as an adult is like checking in on old friends, and I enjoy the characters and the closed little universe of it. The plots can be hit or miss, and in general I prefer the adventure/horror ones-- you know, the ones that could never in a million years happen to an actual person. Not that this in any way resembles real life, and it concerns me a little how much I thought it did as a kid. These are less like high school students than fully formed adults running around, scheming, and creating problems for each other, but I think that's part of the appeal. Actual high school is pretty much a drag.
The author does a nice job setting Devon up as the sexy, mysterious outsider. While we fully expect him to fall for Jessica (and so does Jessica), it turns out he has more chemistry with his lab partner, Elizabeth. I don't remember if I had a preference as a kid in this Elizabeth/Todd/Devon/Jessica love square, but I don't have one now. Elizabeth tends to be set up as the innocent angel opposite Jessica's deviousness, but she's just as jealous and manipulative as her sister. Meanwhile, Devon is trying to steal someone else's girlfriend. My overall feeling was that they're all pretty terrible people, and they deserve what they get. Their drama is a little much for me as an adult, but it's a fun break from my heavier reading.
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Smolder by Laurell K. Hamilton
"'Helplessness in the face of tragedy is hard for people like us,' Jake said.
I looked at him. 'People like us?'
'People of action, warriors. Our weapons protect us and those we care for; when our skills fail us and we lose lives, it is hard. It erodes some of our sense of self.'"
Year Read: 2024
Rating: 4/5
About: There are overall spoilers for the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series ahead. Tough as nails vampire slayer Anita Blake's wedding to the king of American vampires, Jean-Claude, is fast approaching, but so are the threats against their people. A killer targeting vampires by exposing them to sunlight while they rest may have bigger designs, and family issues, wedding fittings, and date night are interrupted by an ancient evil come to take Jean-Claude's seat of power for itself. Trigger warnings: death, fire, mental health issues abound, jealousy/possessiveness and toxic relationships (countered). NSFW content.
Thoughts: This late in the series, the books are kind of hit or miss, but I liked Smolder a bit more than the last few in the series. While it's smaller in size, it does still fall into some of the pacing and irrelevancy problems of having so. many. damn. characters, but I'm accepting that as a matter of course at this point. Toward the end, it literally takes characters several chapters just to change locations because every time they turn a corner, a new character has to shovel sixteen emotional issues before they can pass. With this many partners in the polycule, I think they need weekly meetings just so everyone can air their grievances at a convenient time instead of, you know, in the middle of a crisis.
It does seem like there are genuine efforts to balance character development with plot here though. Anita is introduced to a new supernatural murder case that, while small in scope in this particular crime scene, is set up to potentially take a larger role on the future. There's also a Big Bad introduced that, miraculously, isn't resolved and defeated in three pages. I don't think we've had a villain span more than one book since the Mother of all Darkness, and I'm really excited to see this play out in more depth. It plays on some fun mythology elements and is scary enough to catch even Edward's interest. There's not a lot of closure on either of those threads, but there's some nice thematic closure on some of the character development, so the book doesn't feel as unfinished as it might have otherwise.
#book review#laurell k. hamilton#anita blake: vampire hunter#smolder#4/5#rating: 4/5#2024#para#paranormal#paranormal romance#adult fiction
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Neither Ronan nor Adam had been trained in the difficult and nuanced art of having a future. They had only ever learned the art of surviving the past.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Greywaren
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AVENGERS ENDGAME
2019 | dir. Anthony Russo; Joe Russo
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