I am really a great blogger and book reviewer, don’t you think?
Anyway, here are the remaining 5 books i read last month while they’re still fresh on my mind, LOL, that’s a joke, nothing stays fresh on my mind longer than 20 minutes these days.
8. Theme Music – T. Marie Vandelly
Hot damn, I was REALLY looking for a legit creepy horror novel and this bitch served. The premise is that the main character, in her 20s, discovers that her childhood home is for sale. Oh yeah, this is also the place where her father ax-murdered her entire family in the kitchen when she was a baby, sparing her. So she does what ANY of us would do and…
you know, buys it.
Her boyfriend is like THE FUCK OUTTA HERE when she finally fesses up and tells him the history of the house, so he won’t move in and now their relationship is strained and oh yeah, her dead family is all “yo welcome home” and walking around with their heads caved in and shit. The descriptions were SICKENING and GORY and painted a gloriously grotesque scene for me. Also, it’s narrated by the main character and her thoughts are twisted and often HILARIOUS. I love when a horror story can effortlessly weave humor into the narrative without coming off as cheesy or slapstick.
It kept me guessing all the way to the end – REALLY enjoyed this one a lot!
9. In a Holidaze – Christina Lauren
After Theme Music’s carnage, I was looking for some levity and Scribd had “Holidaze” by Christina Lauren available. I’m not a super big romance person but I did read another one of their books last year and LOVED IT.
This is kind of like a Groundhog Day-style scenario where a young woman (I think she is in her mid-20s) keeps reliving the same day except that she’s able to make changes, but anytime she makes the wrong choice, something inevitably falls from the sky and lands on her head, causing er to once again wake up on Day One.
What I loved the most about this book is that the main character, her younger brother and her divorced parents have decades-old tradition where they spend Christmas vacation with family friends in a cabin owned by one of the families, and that dynamic is EVERYTHING. It makes me so sad that I don’t have anything like this in my life! Anyway, the book starts with the owners of the cabin telling the rest of the crew on the last day that they can no longer afford the upkeep of the cabin and are going to sell it.
Yes, there’s a romance involved, but what I enjoyed the most is the effort that goes into trying to change the timeline in order to keep the tradition from dying.
I’m actually crying as I remember how it ends. It was so pure. This book is wonderful. I think I’m obsessed with Christina Lauren and I have two more books by them waving to me from my Scribd shelf so I gotta get on that shit soon.
10. These Vengeful Hearts – Katherine Laurin
Is it weird that I can almost never remember characters’ names, even if it’s only been like a week since I read the book? Because I can’t remember a single person in this book and also this book was not great. Like, I think even if I was 14, I’d be like, “This book is not great.”
There’s a secret society at this high school called The Red Court and students can ask them for “favors” (eg. “make me homecoming queen;” “publicly shame my cheating girlfriend” etc) but then they eventually have to “pay” by carrying out usually really half past-bullying more toward legit crimes against a “target.” Our main girl has a plan to infiltrate the court and find out who the Red Queen is in an effort to take them down for paralyzing her older sister.
But then OMG is she ENJOYING the power? Dun dun dunnnn.
It was dumb. Sometimes I crave a good YA thriller and this wasn’t it.
11. The Winter People – Jennifer McMahon
I kept seeing people compare this to Pet Sematary except that it was really boring, the writing was kind of bad, and not a single character had any, well, character. It’s a split timeline and I surprisingly liked the one set in the 1800s better than present day.
But yeah, this wasn’t scary and then the present day characters were soooooo annoying and I 100% just wanted everyone to die. It was also shockingly difficult for me to follow the present day story line. I couldn’t keep track of who everyone was and then when the big “reveal” happened, I was like “Huh?” because I couldn’t follow how everyone was supposedly connected.
This one booktuber that I think is so lame gave this a 5 and that should have been the biggest indication for me to run far away from this book.
12. Eight Perfect Murders – Peter Swanson
This was pretty fun! I didn’t enjoy it as much as his other book, The Kind Worth Killing, but it’s perfect for anyone who loves a good murder mystery! The premise is that a string of murders have been connected to a blog post written on a book store’s website about EIGHT books featuring PERFECT MURDERS, try to keep up, guys.
The book is told from the POV of the man who wrote the blog post, who is also the co-owner of the book store. I kept picturing Joe from the TV adaption of the book “You” – if you know, you know. I gave it a 3 – it was fun, immersive, but it didn’t BLOW ME AWAY. His other aforementioned book had me screaming, but this one had me politely clapping.
I feel like this would be a great book to read on a plane. Sigh.
And that was how my February went. Henry has been obsessed with audio books lately so he tore through a bunch of books too but I’mnot even going to ask him to review any because we all know how that will go:
“I liked it.”
“It was good.”
“Eh.”
“I can’t remember.”
“To [sic] many big words.”
“Yes.”