specificwonderland's reviews
846 reviews

The Gunslinger by Stephen King

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The characters weren't as complex as I'd like and I didn't relate to the MC. I did enjoy the creeping suffocating atmosphere of wondering what was going on at the Deptford. 

The Long Walk by Stephen King, Richard Bachman

3.5

Usually Stephen King has a high level of cringe and the endings usually suck but this was more pulled together and the dorky old timey jokes actually kinda worked for a cast of a bunch of teenage boys. Bleak! 

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This was ok. I wish it was longer. Not a ton happened. I thought they'd at least mention someone who had found their book. But that is more bleak, no one ever found or heard of anyone finding their book. 

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Hoo doggy.

Toxic masculinity, fetishization of Asian culture, budding bisexualism if not lesbianism, watching your parents make terrible decisions. Family fate and (mis)fortune. Absent dads. A pedo. We really went somewhere in this book. Female serial killer who ultimately has a brain tumor? Body horror/food horror. Food gore? This wasn't what I expected but it was a romp and I'd read more from this author! 

The Shadows by Alex North

dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This story was too long. But. I liked the way the author wrote. I enjoyed the language, the british-ness of it. Lucid dreams, haunting nightmares, cycles of murders of boys in a small town. 

Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Edward the philanderer. He got his due. 


We meet Edward and Louise, a happy couple, as Edward has been struck with a mysterious affliction. Basically he's decaying and rotting away, with fresh blood and wetness that Louise toils over, lest he becomes "dry". I liked how for the first few chapters, we meet and get an overview of new characters. First Bill, then Tom, then Jean. If I wrote a book, this makes sense to me, to introduce characters simply, at each new chapter. 

Edward has been hemorrhaging money and his things are being repossessed and jettisoned as he languishes. For this reason, Louise complies with his wish to travel via railway carriage to Buffalo, to an apple farm where Edward grew up. When they get to the farm after his morphine-induced coma, he tells Louise the yarn of how this happened to him. 

Pretty disgusting but also, there have been worse marriages. 

Pines by Blake Crouch

challenging mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I was trying to figure out why I was reading this book for most of the time I was reading it. It's fast-paced, urgently mysterious, and alpha male (not my usual search terms).

As the story drew to a close, I think I figured out how this book came into my orbit. Maybe 5-10y ago, I read a pair of really good books like this, fast-paced, almost Bourne Identity-like, with a mystery and sci-fi elements. The series was John Scalzi's Lock In (I think there were only 2 books, or maybe 2 and a prequel?). This book has similar flavoring: astute, shiny, male detective who is "on the case", mysterious science

in a dystopian society

, and a ticking clock device, in this case, figure it out before the town kills you.

Plot points I took issue with:

if his family was there, why didn't Pope or anyone bait him with that at the jump. Yo Ethan why are you struggling so hard to bail when Teresa and Ben are.....right here? And just Beverly's character in general (a nod to IT?)...she was trying to help him but no one at the bar knew her? Or did they just say they didn't know her? They didn't do a great job of keeping those 2 apart if Beverly was a threat to this utopia. Last thing I can think of, plot wise, only because I was a phlebotomist for almost 20y....when you get surgery in a normal hospital, they don't give you your sedative through a normal venipuncture, it's through your IV so they can also give you pain meds, saline, etc. I guess maybe the justification here I could give them is this wasn't a normal hospital, it was some Podunk half-staffed facility staffed by idiots who were barely online and working with limited equipment (although the reveal tells us the founder was a billionaire who spent "billions on r&d" so I would think they're not starving for supplies or staff).

Some of the phrasing was clunky and took me out of the narrative. One example was "She took out a glass, squirted water all over the ice." Is it just me? What a strange way to describe that, in the actual word selection and the phrasing/grammar. Another example was the writer describing the river noise, how it rushed by with a "purr". Um, what? Other than that, it definitely gave a Thin Blue Line, home of the free because of the brave, Toby Keith, xenophobic vibe and when I reached the end, I wasn't sure if the writer crafted this vibe for this book or if the writer's own traits were peeking through this "fiction". Either way, it put me off the rest of the series, but I think if you also enjoyed the Lock In series, this is another series to check out!

Update - I googled his author bio and fwiw his Wikipedia says he fought his wife for medical rights of their kids to vaccinate them, so he seems more lib than I picked up on in the book. 

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Uhhh. 

I couldn't put it down until about 50%.

When they started hinting around maybe other consciousness' were placed in bodies, I felt alarm bells going off. I put it down for a few days. I think I read somewhere (a blurb for the book? A Facebook group?) this book is The Strangers meets Get Out and when we started to see glimpses of the Get Out plot, I immediately lost interest.

It was tense. It was atmospheric. I, too, found it to be somewhat HOL-adjacent, with the footnotes, evidence, and the undulating floorplan. I'm impressed this writer got published, I've never done that. But I think this could've tightened up in some ways. 

Questions I still have: 
Is Shylo ok? 
Why did Thomas show up? With the title, did he just used to (always) live here? He just does this anytime someone moves in? Did an evil entity just pick Eve to drive her crazy for fun? The kids were all in on it? When Jenni asked about her wrist tattoo, was that her breaking character? 
What did the address change matter? Just another symptom of her "insanity"? 
Does Thomas's dad being in a band matter? 
Is this a scary story about Capgras syndrome? 
Is it a paranormal haunting story? 
Was the whole town in on it to keep using the hatches for whatever weird body possession they were doing? 
Why did the officer get so mad interrogating Eve, when he seemed okayish talking to Andrew? 

At the end, I didn't care to revisit my questions and I don't think I'll think about this book again. It had real potential the first half and then kinda felt like it was throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck. I thought the woman chasing her through the basement was scary but her final few apotheoses with Charlie, Thomas were either overwrought or lackadaisical. On the pro side, it was fun hearing local places shouted out and I'd probably give the writer one more chance with another book! 

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Thin Kid reigns.