March | 2020 | My Haunted Library

March 29, 2020
by Jennifer Leave a comment

Review: White Lies

White Lies – Jeremy Bates, 2012. Rating: 1/5

On a dark and stormy night, high-school English teacher Katrina Burton acts against her better judgment and picks up a hitchhiker. A skeevy, drunken, angry hitchhiker. Katrina lies to get him out of her car, and while the trick works, it spirals into a series of untruths that involve her falling for a sociopath and covering up multiple murders. Don’t get too excited. The book is awful.

Katrina is recovering from the death of her fiancé two years ago and looks forward to her new teaching job in small-town Leavenworth, WA. Unfortunately, she discovers that the creepy hitchhiker she picked up is Zach Marshall, the philosophy teacher at her new school. Zach is equally unpleasant sober. He thinks she lied about having a house on the lake (she did). To catch her out, Zach wants Katrina to throw a teacher party at her home. He decides to “start a vendetta” against Katrina and sneaks around her house, peeping in her bathroom window while she’s bathing.

Meanwhile, Kristin meets tall, broad-shouldered, charismatic, handsome Jack Reeves. Jack is Kristin’s knight in shining armor. Plus, he has a Porsche. They hit it off immediately and fall into bed, despite Jack’s admission that he was a pit fighter with mob connections who killed a guy in the ring (!)

** Major plot spoilers ahead in the next paragraph. But frankly, I hope no one reads this book. So go ahead, read the spoilers. **

Kristin and Jack throw the faculty party at a rental house. Jack savagely kills the elderly landlord. Kristin believes that it was self-defense or an accident—whatever: the point is, Jack’s not to blame—and helps Jack stuff the body into a truck and to make it look like the old man died in a car accident. Except they mess it up and have to go back and set the truck on fire. But a witness already found the truck, so Jack kills him. Zach also witnessed the murder, but he’s falling for Katrina’s sister and doesn’t want to screw up his chances with her by calling the police on Katrina. (What?!) More murders (four, I think) and more intimidation (Jack threatens to have a friend rape Zach’s mother) ensue. Kristin and Zach finally tell the truth, and we learn that Jack is not what he seems. (He’s a homicidal ex-CIA agent. Really.) Despite being charged as accessory to murder and receiving a year of probation – Kristin keeps her job at the school. Excuse me?!

** Spoilers over. **

This book is dreadful.

The characters are shallow, unbelievable, and completely unlikeable. Kristin is bald-faced stupid. She helps Jack because she can’t envision him in jail. He has such zest for life, he’s like a “stallion,” who is “not meant to be caged.” Please. Kristin weakly argues with her conscience that maybe Jack is a murderer and a liar, (Yes!) but more likely, he’s a “decent man doing what anyone would have done.” (No! No!) Even the priest she confesses to urges her to turn Jack in, but she is “blinded by love.” Ugh. I can’t suspend my disbelief (and basic outrage) at such a wuss of a character to enjoy any part of this book. And she’s supposed to be a teacher! Look: I don’t need or want strong female characters in everything I read. I’m not asking for Arya or Hermione, here. But there’s a difference between a well-written vulnerable female character, or a meek character, or even a weak-willed character, and this caricature of a helpless female character. She thinks hardware stores are “men’s places” for gosh sakes. Everyone else is just as disagreeable.

I’m a thriller junkie. But this wasn’t thrilling, it was ridiculous and irritating. I typically don’t review books that I don’t like—I don’t want to waste my time. In this case, I’m doing it to save other people time. Don’t bother with White Lies. Cons: Characters. Plot. All the biggies. Pros: It was over quickly.

March 22, 2020
by Jennifer Leave a comment

Review: Half-Off Ragnarok

Half-Off Ragnarok – Seanan McGuire, 2014. Rating: 4/5

Geeky Alexander Price is a herpetologist at the West Columbus Zoo. It’s the perfect cover for his work with cryptids like basilisks, cockatrices, gorgons, wadjets, and lindworms. But when zoo employees start turning to stone, Alex needs to find the culprit fast before his secret life, his famous cryptozoologist family, and his beloved cryptids are exposed.

Alex lives with his grandmother, a cuckoo (telepathic humanoid hunter), his grandfather, a revenant (made of reanimated body parts), and his psychically damaged cuckoo cousin, Sarah. Unlike his ballroom dancer and parkour pro sister, Verity, whose focus is on protecting urban cryptids, Alex specializes in the reptilian variety, like small feathered frogs called frickens.

Alex finds an unexpected ally in Shelby, his beautiful Australian coworker/girlfriend. Turns out Shelby is part of the Thirty-Six Society, protecting Australia’s cryptids from the evil, single-minded Covenant. Together they discover that whoever is petrifying zookeepers has a grudge against the Price family.

Half-Off Ragnarok is flat-out fun. Admittedly, I was initially skeptical: I enjoyed the first two books in the series, which are narrated from Verity’s point of view, and I wasn’t super-sold on a reptilian and amphibian focus, but I was hooked after the first couple of pages. McGuire brings the same engaging mix of tongue-in-cheek humor and monster action to Half-Off Ragnarok that she does to the rest of the series.

There is also a sweetness to these stories. They highlight the “humanity” of different creatures and our ability to live alongside them. The concept of family takes on a welcomingly broad definition. In this world, cobra-wadjet families coexist with cuckoos and revenants and humans and a thriving gorgon colony. Don’t worry: the Aeslin mice make an appearance too, since Alex has a subcolony! If this is your first InCryptid book, you’re in for a treat. If you’ve read the first two and are worried about missing Verity, don’t be: Half-Off Ragnarok is a rewarding read.

March 8, 2020
by Jennifer Leave a comment

Review: The Lying Game

The Lying Game—Ruth Ware, 2017. 3.5/5

The lies four friends told seventeen years ago return to haunt them when a set of skeletal remains turns up on the beach.

“I need you.” Kate’s terse text sends her three best friends in the world hurrying to her side. Kate, Isa, Thea, and Fatima have been besties since they spent a year together in boarding school. There at Salten House, they play the “lying game” on their credulous classmates, earning points by telling shocking lies. Their game and cliquish attitude isolate them from the rest of the school but solidifies their friendship. Most weekends they spend at Kate’s dilapidated house on the coast, drinking, smoking, hanging with her handsome French “stepbrother,” Luc, and swimming in the waters of the Reach. Kate’s permissive, artist father, Ambrose, draws them incessantly, clothed and dishabille. One day, Ambrose turns up dead: Suicide. Maybe. The girls secretly bury Ambrose on the beach. Now grown, the women live with the guilt of hiding the body and the lies they told over a decade ago. But someone (or someones) knows their secret and the truth could ruin their lives.

The Lying Game is a page-turner that ticks all the boxes on the psychological thriller checklist. We have a completely unreliable first-person narrator with a fragile emotional state. An ominous, gothic setting: The decrepit old Tide Mill that is Kate’s home, and to an extent, her prison, is literally being washed away. Natural elements like water and light and wind take on threatening qualities. The flashbacks to the fifteen-year old girls’ life in boarding school are among the best parts of the book, and significantly add to the novel’s tense, slow burn. There are red herrings. Secrets. Blackmail. A remote, creepy village literally (and symbolically) covered in nets. A gaunt, hostile postmistress with a grudge. The list goes on. These elements shine.

The novel stumbles, for me, in two places. First, the narrator, Isa. Her borderline over-obsession with her tiresome (mostly screaming) six-month infant, and her willingness to lie to (and forsake in a heartbeat) her significant other are off-putting. I didn’t like her. Consequently, I was not rooting for her, and did not care if her lies were exposed. Unfortunately, Ware spends most of the time crafting Isa’s character, and so Fatima and Thea read a little flat. Second, the women’s big secret, the one that has driven them to extreme coping mechanisms, haunted them for seventeen years, riddled them with guilt, etc…wasn’t really that big a secret. Lois Duncan’s excellent YA book, I Know What You Did Last Summer—which The Lying Game pays homage to—harbors a more serious secret.

That said, I flew through The Lying Game. Ware is undisputedly skilled at building tension and keeping interest. I do, however, recommend The Death of Mrs. Westaway and In a Dark, Dark Wood over The Lying Game.

March 1, 2020
by Jennifer Leave a comment

Review: A Single Light

A Single Light – Tosca Lee, 2020. Rating 4/5

In this fast-paced sequel to The Line Between, Wynter and Chase emerge from their underground bunker to find America in shambles. Somewhere in this lawless wasteland they must find antibiotics to save the life of Wynter’s friend.

Months earlier, Wynter escaped a doomsday cult, met and fell for an ex-Marine named Chase, delivered a suitcase of bio samples which could save the world from the early onset dementia pandemic, and ended up in a time-locked silo with her last remaining loved ones and about 50 other folks for six months. There. You’re caught up.

Now, the silo residents anxiously await Open Day—when they can return to the world. The gentle Doomsday prepper, Noah, gives the group daily video updates from the farm on top, until one day the messages stop. Tensions mount, suspicions grow, and things get violent down below. Wynter and Chase have a falling out. Chase takes a team topside and discovers that the farm has been looted and ransacked and everyone is gone. Unfortunately, the group also finds out that America has not recovered—the opposite in fact. There is no vaccine, the virus is still rampant, and the existing survivors are not the nicest folks. Chase and Wynter go on a dangerous quest for the medicine that will save Julie.

Calling A Single Light “action-packed” would be a bit of an understatement. In fact, the book feels like an extended, breakneck A-Team episode (though a lot grittier). We’ve got a bad boss-man and his henchmen, a car chase, explosions, fires, a helicopter crash, and urban shootouts. Now, I love a good thriller (and the A-Team), but what I miss in this novel is the character development that made Lee’s first title shine and inspired me to put it on my Best of 2019 list. The best parts of A Single Light take place in the silo. Lee skillfully portrays the simmering tensions of the silo occupants, their descent into mistrust, and their readiness to relinquish cultural norms. That is the good stuff.

Don’t get me wrong: The rest of the book flies. It is exciting, suspenseful, and totally engaging. I had a hard time putting it down—but I did have trouble suspending my disbelief. There are moments of sadness with a few character losses, but the book careens along towards a happy ending. Comparatively happy. There is a pandemic on, after all.