What Lies Around The Bend...

"Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the ex...

  "A mysterious book that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure. A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed. After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written - if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it - if she can.  Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world’s wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost?' Review: Wha...

  "For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass." Review: Alright this one, was a hard one to digest. I wanted to like it more than I did, if I'm honest. This is a fever dream reimag...

 "One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely - smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else - something far more ancient and powerful. As Father Moreno's obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her “bruja Craft crew” and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right." Review: A possession horror story where the entity is for the girls, and the real demon is jus...

  “Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story. One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom? Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought." Review: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??????? Worst scooby-doo, half-assed mystery. AND THEY HAD ME! I was so down for a group of people brought together by nicotine (although for people who can only smoke at a graveyard, ya'll be smoking everywhere),...

“Lucy lives with her husband, Jake and their two boys. Her life is devoted to her children, her days, mapped out by their finally tune routine. Until a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message. His wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband. He thought she should know. Lucy is distraught. She decides to stay with Jake, if only for their children sake, but in order to even the score, they agreed that she will hurt him three times. Jake Will not know when the hurt is coming, or what form it will take. And so begins a delicate game of crime and punishment, from which there is no return…” Review: “Deeply unsettling” author Daisy Johnson said of this book, and honestly I think that’s the perfect description. For me though this wasn’t necessarily horror, and fantasy is a stretch at best, but let’s backtrack a bit. This story was about grief. Lucy is grieving and trying to heal from a monumental wound. She by no means is a pillar of a healthy psyche, but even in her worst mom...

 WARNING: SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN THIS FAR IN THE ALEX STERN SERIES, STOP NOW. DO NOT READ. THIS IS BOOK 2. CHECK OUT NINTH HOUSE FOR THE REVIEW OF BOOK 1! "Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory - even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale. Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness ...

" We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we? Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of re...

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN THIS FAR IN THE MONSTERS OF VERITY SERIES, STOP NOW. DO NOT READ. THIS IS BOOK 2. CHECK OUT THIS SAVAGE SONG FOR THE REVIEW OF BOOK 1! "Kate Harker is a girl who isn’t afraid of the dark. She’s a girl who hunts monsters. And she’s good at it. August Flynn is a monster who can never be human. No matter how much he once yearned for it. He has a part to play. And he will play it, no matter the cost. Nearly six months after Kate and August were first thrown together, the war between the monsters and the humans is a terrifying reality. In Verity, August has become the leader he never wished to be, and in Prosperity, Kate has become the ruthless hunter she knew she could be. When a new monster emerges from the shadows—one who feeds on chaos and brings out its victim’s inner demons—it lures Kate home, where she finds more than she bargained for. She’ll face a monster she thought she killed, a boy she thought she knew, and a demon all her ow...

  WARNING: SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN THIS FAR IN THE DIVINERS SERIES, STOP NOW. DO NOT READ. THIS IS BOOK 4. CHECK OUT  THE DIVINERS  FOR THE REVIEW OF BOOK 1,  LAIR OF DREAMS  FOR BOOK 2, AND BEFORE THE DEVIL BREAKS YOU FOR BOOK 3! "After the horrifying explosion that claimed one of their own, the Diviners find themselves wanted by the US government, and on the brink of war with the King of Crows. While Memphis and Isaiah run for their lives from the mysterious Shadow Men, Isaiah receives a startling vision of a girl, Sarah Beth Olson, who could shift the balance in their struggle for peace. Sarah Beth says she knows how to stop the King of Crows - but, she will need the Diviners' help to do it. Elsewhere, Jericho has returned after his escape from Jake Marlowe's estate, where he has learned the shocking truth behind the King of Crow's plans. Now, the Diviners must travel to Bountiful, Nebraska, in hopes of joining forces with Sarah Beth and to sto...

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN THIS FAR IN THE SOMETHING DARK AND HOLY TRILOGY, STOP NOW. DO NOT READ. THIS IS BOOK 3. CHECK OUT  WICKED SAINTS   FOR THE REVIEW OF BOOK 1 AND CHECK OUT RUTHLESS GODS FOR BOOK 2!   "The girl, the monster, the prince, the queen. They broke the world. And some things can never be undone. they must unite once more to fight the dark chaos they've unleashed - but is it already too late?" Review: This was not as amazing as I was hoping!!!! Ugh I’m so torn on this one. I’ve really become invested in the three leading characters in this story and I was hyped to read their epic conclusion. This was what everything has culminated to; the epic collision between humans-not-humans, monsters-not-monsters, and gods-not-gods. However, this book seemed to just be a copy-and-paste from the last book. Our group of villains are doing exactly what they did in the last book, squabbling amongst themselves and traveling to some unknown spot to sto...

  “Sixteen-year-old twins Madeline and Catlin move to a new life in Ballyfrann, a strange and isolated Irish town, a place where the earth is littered with small corpses and unspoken truths. A place where, for generations, teenage girls have gone missing in the surrounding mountains. As distance grows between the twins - as Catlin falls in love, and Madeline begins to understand her own nascent witchcraft - Madeline discovers that Ballyfrann is a place full of predators. And when Catlin falls into the gravest danger of all, Madeline must ask herself who she really is, and who she wants to be - or rather, who she might have to become to save her sister.” Review: This read was so much more interesting than I had anticipated. This was an Irish horror story with monsters and witches and more herbs than a horticulturist would know what to do with. Two twins in a town even more creepy than ever thought possible, and sacrifices so gruesome, no one would have ever agreed to come.  Thi...

“After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.       Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.     Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but mig...

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN THIS FAR IN THE DIVINERS SERIES, STOP NOW. DO NOT READ. THIS IS BOOK 3. CHECK OUT  THE DIVINERS  FOR THE REVIEW OF BOOK 1, AND LAIR OF DREAMS FOR BOOK 2! “New York City. 1927. Lights are bright. Jazz is king. Parties are wild. And the dead are coming... After battling a supernatural sleeping sickness that claimed two of their own, the Diviners have had enough lies. They're more determined than ever to uncover the mystery behind their extraordinary powers, even as they face off against an all-new terror. Out on Ward's Island, far from the city's bustle, sits a mental hospital haunted by the lost souls of people long forgotten--ghosts who have unusual and dangerous ties to the man in the stovepipe hat, also known as the King of Crows. With terrible accounts of murder and possession flooding in from all over and New York City on the verge of panic, the Diviners must band together and brave the sinister ghosts invading the asylum,...