thatweirdbookgirlie's reviews
706 reviews

Stitches by Hirokatsu Kihara

dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

Maybe it's just because they're short stories, but none of them felt "scary." While I wouldn't say they were bad, they did end up mostly being a bit dull. Ito's artwork is a nice addition to the stories. 

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

What a moving book, in which we explore mothers and daughters and their experiences in China and as Chinese-Americans. Don't expect the stories to be fully linked (there are bits and pieces that are), but rather a collection of eight different women's stories. Despite being written in 1989, it still feels like a relevant story of these everyday lives. 

The White Guy Dies First by Terry J. Benton-Walker

adventurous emotional funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.75

It is so rare to find a short story collection where basically every story is a winner. And this one succeeded in that for me.
All Eyes on Me: A great start to the series. A circus comes to town, and this may be Helen's chance/inspiration to always become the person she's been deeply longing to be.

I don't love that the boyfriend just up and disappears (did he not actually die in the Hall of Mirrors?),

but other than that a solid story.
Hedge: This one is a short one. I don't want to give anything away but this one packs quite a great story into a short package.
Best Served Cold: I liked this one a lot. A different take on cannibalism, that it is the eating of human flesh that turns you to something different. The main character is taken, tortured and slowly eaten.

Defends themself and ends up eating the man who was eating them and turns into one of them.

The Protégé: I may be biased because I love magic but I loved this one and want to read the continuation of what happens after that ending in a full novel. Quick and compelling story.
Docile Girls: One of the best so far

(if you ignore the how could she possibly do this part of the killing)

. You'd never suspect the "docile" Asian girl.
Gray Grove: A brief tale of two girls who go in search of a ghost for their true crime podcast, to figure out what happened to a missing man. A demon haunted that swamp, who knows for how long.
Everything's Coming Up Roses: Written in the form of journal entries. We learn more about the main girl as we read more of her entries

and how she is mentally unstable and has been murdering and burying people in her garden.

Heaven: I'm not sure whether I liked this one or not. While the general concept is a bit intriguing, at the same time it didn't make a lot of sense.

(That you need to die to then be given this second chance at life in the new world covered in water.)

Maybe it's just due to the lack of details in the world building due to it being a short story.
Break through Our Skin: Not sure how to describe this one without giving anything away. But a great story about a Iranian trans person navigating the world of white academia. 

Wasps: The lengths someone will go to to protect their family home. Such a good one, and another I don't want to give away by saying too much in my review.
Hell is Other Demons: A summoning of a demon goes wrong. This story was quick and to the point. Not bad, but also not one of the best in the collection.
The Road to Hell: And what a way to go out. A haunted house story told by the house doing the haunting. Loved it! 

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions!

 

The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller

emotional funny fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I loved so much about this book. A diverse set of queer characters who were really interesting. A unique way in which the zombie-like plague is spreading. It really kept me engaged throughout the book. But once we hit the plot twist 

that Leah was in on it all along with Seabrook

I started to lose interest. While I didn't mind the twist, I did mind that

Wendy somehow will still fight to the death for her. It just seems so unbelievable, even though Leah does come back to fight alongside them. You wouldn't have to kill half of your community if she had went against them in the first place!

Maybe you'll like the ending more than I did, but for me it brought down what was a great story.

Thanks to the Quirk Books team who handed these galleys out at NYCC 2023.

Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields

reflective slow-paced

3.0

Overall, I feel as if this book is a bit lackluster. Many of the stories just didn't resonate with me, and the prose often felt like it dragged.
Dressing Up for the Carnival: A very brief story of descriptions of people. We jump on to the next person as they interact with another somehow. A nice brief story.
A Scarf: A woman on a book tour for a moderately successful book. I loved the bits where she was searching for the perfect gift, a scarf, for her daughter.
Weather: A very brief story of weather people who go on strike, which means weather no longer exists.
Flatties: This story was very short. Weird and did not get the point of it.
Dying for Love: A bit of a longer story about several women going through a divorce. Boring in my opinion.
Ilk: Didn't really get the point of this one. Bounced around without really saying anything that I could personally grasp.
Stop!: This one is just three pages but a great story. Something is wrong with the queen, which is revealed as her inability to deal with time. She locks herself in her tower, and forces those in the town to remove clocks, calendars, etc.
Mirrors: This is the best thus far. A couple who spends a summer in their cottage away from mirrors and what that means to them.
The Harp: Very short and weird tale of a harp that falls on a woman.
Our Men and Women: I did not get the point of this longer story. It didn't seem to be saying much of anything.
Keys: Another good story and the connection of keys to one's personality.
Windows: A tale in which windows are taxed as a luxury. The story follows two artists and what that lack of natural light means. Another top story in the collection.
Reportage: A Roman arena is found in Canada. Another story where I personally didn't get the point.
Edith-Esther: An author working with a biographer. Another story that I really enjoyed. The biographer is attempting to look for a message in her work that isn't really there. 

New Music: A woman writing about the "second best" composer after Byrd. I really enjoyed this one, and how sometimes it's okay, and even preferable, to not be the best.
Soup du Jour: Another mediocre story. Maybe I just didn't get the point.
Invention: Another one I really liked. A person traces their ancestry and sees they come from a long line of inventors. Discusses what invention truly means.
Death of an Artist: And another one I didn't really get. A dying artist looking back at his life, but nothing important seems to be said. 
The Next Best Kiss: Two intellectuals spend the summer having a bit of a fling. We see how easily things can turn south.
 Eros: A tale of a woman's life as she discovers what sex is. An okay story.
Dressing Down: A man starts a nudist colony. Another story that didn't really hit with a point.

 

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

adventurous funny slow-paced

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

3.5

To start, this genre is not always my cup of tea. I tend to shift away from historical fiction because it tends to be boring. This was not. While I do believe it was too long (at least for my taste) it read well and had so many exciting bits. The fact that King Arthur and the story surrounding him is made up to begin with gave Grossman the opportunity to put a unique and fresh spin on the tale.
But it does drag on. I wish it was at least 100 pages less, and I feel as if that could have been done. Again, fully aware this may be a personal preference so take my review with a grain of salt. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the galley in exchange for my honest feedback.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

"Lots of people are legends, the good and the bad. Circumstances can make you a legend. Heroes are much rarer. Heroes take action."

This was a wild ride. The book blatantly discusses how Hollywood likes to literally bury gay stories

and also the impact that AI (although to the extreme in this book) is going to have on media.

This is a great mix of some really scary moments with some truly emotional ones. However the last ten percent of the book felt rushed which is why I can't give this five stars.

After all of this buildup and tension the fact that they walk right in and destroy the AI nanobot network so simply just feels like it was forced.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Tor for a copy in exchange for my honest review!

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

funny lighthearted slow-paced

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

2.25

This book was a slow drag. I enjoyed the portions written in the current day a lot more, as I was very curious what was going to happen with the police investigation. It also felt a lot more humorous

like when the elephant Sonia literally sat on someone.

  It was the bit that really kept me going despite having to push through a lot of the historical sections. This book easily could have been a hundred less pages and much more enjoyable if the past sections weren't so drawn out and tedious. It's like the author is trying way too hard to make political connections throughout Allan's life. A bad version of Forest Gump.

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was a book that I just could not put down.

I am not sure how the author made me feel sympathetic towards Ji-won. I can't say that the random people she killed deserved it. But George definitely did.

We watch the descent of Ji-won as her mental health spirals out of control, after her father leaves and her mother starts dating a new man. Along with that we see the familial drama between mother and two daughters, who seemed close but all become at ends with each other. We also see asian fetishism which is not a topic that is broached nearly enough despite being very prevalent. 
This one can get a bit graphic with the body horror aka

tearing out and eating of human eyes.

The writing is also a bit choppy, which I feel like worked well for the story. But this writing style may not be everyone's preference.
Such a strong debut and I can't wait to see what else this author does!

Thanks to Netgalley and Erewhon Books for the copy in exchange for an honest review!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cannibalism, Murder, Racism, and Body horror

Horror Movie: A Novel by Paul Tremblay

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

This was a hard review to write. I loved pretty much the entire book. The screenplay portions are some of the best writing I've read in a horror movie and had me so entranced. We really got to know the mindset of Chloe and Valentina, along with the Weird Guy/Thin Kid (sidenote: I loved that we never found out the main character's name, just like they never revealed the name in the screenplay) as more of the book went on and we saw more of the original shooting of the film take place. I loved the time jumps, so we never really stayed comfortable in one place as we read. I feel like being disoriented by both the time jumps and the jumps to the screenplay really gave this novel that oomph it needed.  But having read other Tremblay, I hated that last chapter.

I wanted something open ended. Or maybe just not what we got. Clearly there was something wrong with the Weird guy, yet I didn't love finding out that he was literally a monster.

Despite my personal disappointment with the end, I still highly recommend this one!


Thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Suicidal thoughts