Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester

 

A biting novel from an electrifying new voice, Such a Pretty Smile is a heart-stopping tour-de-force about powerful women, angry men, and all the ways in which girls fight against the forces that try to silence them.

There’s something out there that’s killing. Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don’t know when to shut up.

2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can’t share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she’s seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother—the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice—until she is punished for using it.

2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape—both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiancé is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waves her “problem” away with pills. But Caroline’s past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can’t understand.

As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty.

Caroline Sawyer, is an artist and single mom who was raised to be a good girl and is raising her daughter to be the same. Her daughter Lila is trying to be a good girl while navigating hormones, her first crush, and the secrets she knows her mother is keeping from her about murdered girls and what that might have to do with her past.

There's an expression that I love and it seems fitting for this review. "Teach your daughters to worry less about fitting into glass slippers and more about shattering glass ceilings." Yet in this day and age so many girls, and so many women are told just to smile. This book made me think of how many times I've heard it myself. Just smile. Why aren't you smiling? As if women should go around with a perpetual grin plastered to their faces regardless of how they feel or even whether the situation calls for smiling.

If you enjoy a slow burn horror with a sharp feminist edge, or if you've ever been "mansplained" to this book is for you. It's part supernatural thriller, part social commentary, and totally different from anything I've ever read.

4 out of 5 stars.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press for granting my wish for a review copy.

Available for pre-order

About the author

Kristi DeMeester is the author of Beneath, published by Word Horde, and Everything That's Underneath by Apex Books. Her short fiction has been included in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror Volumes 9 and 11, Year's Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1, 3, and 5, and Stephen Jone's Best New Horror. Her short fiction has also appeared in publications such as Black Static, The Dark, Pseudopod, as well as several others. In her spare time, she alternates between telling people how to pronounce her last name and how to spell her first.

Beneath the Stairs by Jennifer Fawcett

In this spine-tingling, atmospheric debut for fans of Jennifer McMahon, Simone St. James, and Chris Bohjalian, a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at a local haunted house—the same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago.

Few in sleepy Sumner’s Mills have stumbled across the Octagon House hidden deep in the woods. Even fewer are brave enough to trespass. A man had killed his wife and two young daughters there, a shocking, gruesome crime that the sleepy upstate New York town tried to bury. One summer night, an emboldened fourteen-year-old Clare and her best friend, Abby, ventured into the Octagon House. Clare came out, but a piece of Abby never did.

Twenty years later, an adult Clare receives word that Abby has attempted suicide at the Octagon House and now lies in a coma. With little to lose and still grieving after a personal tragedy, Clare returns to her roots to uncover the darkness responsible for Abby’s accident.
 

When Clare was a teen, she and her friends snuck into the Octagon House, a crumbling structure in the woods with a dark history and rumored to be cursed. Her best friend Abby was briefly trapped in the cellar and whatever she saw there cast a dark shadow over the rest of her life.

Clare has tried to forget the past, and has mostly succeeded at doing so until the cryptic messages from her former friend Abby induce nightmares. Her life is already unsettled when she is contacted by Abby's mother, telling her that Abby is hospitalized after a suicide attempt in the Octagon House and asking that she come to see her.

Written on multiple timelines the story kind of bounced from present day Clare as an adult, to Clare as a teen, to way back when the house was first being built, and then forward to the only family who ever lived in it. It's a slow burn, told from multiple points of view, and is more of a mystery than a haunted house story. There's not really much in the way of scares but there is a lot of suspense. I was enjoying the story immensely until something that seemed out of character happened near the end. I can't say what it was without spoiling the whole book for you but something happened that seemed almost to defeat the whole purpose of the previous goings on. If not for that I probably would have rated it 5 stars.

4 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy for review.

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About the author

Jennifer Fawcett holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been produced in theaters across the country and published in Third Coast Magazine, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Storybrink, and in the anthology Long Story Short. Her debut novel, Beneath the Stairs comes out with Atria Books (Simon & Schuster) in February 2022. She teaches writing at Skidmore College.

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The Saga of Dead-Eye Book One: Vampires, Zombies, & Mojo Men by Ronald Kelly

ALIVE, YET DEAD…

The bloody War Between the States and a harrowing confinement in an enemy prison camp had turned Joshua Wingade into a broken man. His nerves and spirit shattered by the barbarity of battle, and demoralized by a cause that his heart secretly despised, Wingade returns home in hope of finding peace and healing.

But, upon his arrival, he discovers that Hell had come to call. His beloved wife had been violated and transformed into a horrid bride of the undead, and his only son abducted by a band of diabolical outlaws led by the renegade vampire, Jules Holland. Along for the ride are three demonic henchmen from the fetid bowels of Hades and the dark witch, Evangeline.
Aware that he is no match for the gang, Wingade rides across Georgia and Tennessee nonetheless, intent on rescuing his child from imminent disaster. During his journey, he witnesses the horrors and atrocities Holland and his evil confederates have wrought. Eventually, he finds himself at the outlaws’ mercy. An instant before death, he makes a final pledge to his stolen son.

“I promise, Daniel! I will come for you!”

DEAD, YET ALIVE…

He awakens to discover that the cold finality of the grave has been thwarted. With the help of the Louisiana mojo man, Job, he has been resurrected. But, the frail and fearful man named Joshua Wingade is forever gone. In his place is the stoic, steel-nerved Dead-Eye with his blind eye aglow and a gun hand as swift and deadly as greased lightning.

Together, they vow to pursue the vampire and his minions, and deliver
young Daniel from his bondage. However, they know that time is their worst enemy. If Holland and the others make it across the Mississippi River to the Western territories beyond, their vengeance may never come to fruition. For they are entering a new purgatory known as the Devil’s Playground… a vast wilderness rife with violence and terrors unleashed from the Hole Out of Nowhere.

A place where death and evil are dealt freely, without atonement to anyone… including God himself!

This may be one time when the synopsis is longer than my review. LOL

Honestly I do not care for westerns, at all. But you can probably tell from the picture that I am a bit of a Ronald Kelly fan. 

I went into this book questioning whether it may or may not be for me. With visions of John Wayne hovering in the back of my mind I waded blindly into this book. What did I find?
"Trapped within the web were the bodies of several men. Or what had once been men. Their bodies were twisted; the arms and legs disjointed and at odds with one another. The flesh of their faces and hands were shriveled, sapped of the color of life and clinging tightly to the bone, as though the muscle underneath had dissolved and wilted away."

Obviously this is not your grandpa's western!

This book is loaded with action, crisp writing, dark humor and genuinely creepy moments.

You do NOT need to be a fan of westerns to enjoy this book.

4 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy for review.

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About the author

 

Best Horror of 2021

It was a tough choice but these are my picks for the best horror of 2021. Notice I did not say novels this year because I just had to include some short stories that were way too good to be left out. The title links will take you to the book synopsis, review, author info if available and Amazon page. These are books you will definitely want to add to your TBR. Dead Daughters actually published in 2020 but since it was my first 5 star read of this year I'm including it.

Dead Daughters by Tim Meyer        Near The Bone By Christina Henry   

The Neighbor by London Clarke     Your Frightful Spirit Stayed by Matthew Cash  

Ride Or Die by James Newman         Come With Me by Ronald Malfi

The Last House On Needless Street by Catriona Ward  The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke

Faithless by Hunter Shea               Dread Softly by Caryn Larrinaga

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig     Beyond the Veil edited by Mark Morris

Christmas Horror Volume 1 Edited by Chris Morey

Introducing the new annual Dark Regions Press holiday anthology: Christmas Horror. Volume 1 features all new and original stories from authors Joe R. Lansdale, John Skipp, Cody Goodfellow, Jeff Strand, J. F. Gonzalez, Stephen Mark Rainey, Nate Southard, and Shane McKenzie. Each story is preceded by a full page/full bleed color illustration by artist Zach McCain

I love Christmas themed horror almost as much as I love Halloween horror. So that, and this gorgeous cover meant I had to own a copy of this book. Most of these stories just weren't that impressive.

I did love The Endless Black of Friday by Nate Southard. It takes place outside a big box store as people line up for hours to get the best Christmas deals, but there is more to worry about than getting trampled over the hottest new toy or the last giant screen tv.

Red Rage by Stephen Mark Rainey was also very good, told on two timelines about a family recently moved into a house near Christmas, and what happened to the previous owners. I also enjoyed Belsnickel by J.F. Gonzalez  when a long lost uncle comes to visit at Christmas. but all is not as it seems.

The other stories just weren't for me and the only one I will mention by name is because

Naughty by Shane Mckenzie should really have come with a trigger warning. Think Stir of Echoes but with revenge for an unnecessarily graphic gang rape on a physically and mentally disabled teen. Put a warning on that shit! Not everyone wants to read that.

3 out of 5 stars

 

Lamella by Max Halper

Mel Lane assumed his life was on the track it was supposed to be: a career with upward movement, a home, a long-term relationship. That is, until he comes home one day to a girlfriend he knows and a child he doesn't. Stranger still, no one else seems disturbed by the child’s presence—or by its bizarre, inhuman features. Mel is a reasonable man, and he knows there is a reasonable explanation—but once the veil of reality begins to ripple, the world around him becomes something he simply doesn't understand. Worse yet, it's becoming very clear that he may never have understood it quite as well as he thought he did.

He knows there are answers, written somewhere on the walls or in the airwaves, but finding them will mean confronting truths about himself and the people around him as he spirals down a rabbit hole of identity and place that will threaten to upend the delicate balance of his life.

A darkly surreal and thought-provoking story, 'Lamella' is the debut novella of American author Max Halper.

 Lamella is a debut novella that really packs a punch. It's darkly humorous, disturbing, sad, gross, unsettling, and unnerving.

Mel Lane comes home from a lousy day and finds his home life to be something out of Twilight Zone. He and his girlfriend did not have any children when he left for work and yet here she is waiting for him with this odd looking multi-holed baby and acting like it's the most normal thing in the world for him to have fathered it. Nobody else seems to think it's at all unusual so he pretty much just rolls with it because what can you do right? At first he is totally repulsed by baby Lamella but eventually she sort of grows on him. 

There is a very poignant anecdote told in this book about how as children, things just go over our heads but we pretend to get the joke, and we laugh along so as not to be left out. And that as adults perhaps we still do the same thing, pretending to understand the point of life and to know what's going on even though it still flies over our heads. That totally jibes with my first thoughts when starting this book. What the hell did I just read? As crazy as it was I enjoyed every minute of this weird and wild story. The writing flows along like a fast moving river and all you can do is just roll with it.

5 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy for review.

Available for pre-order
 

Twelve Days of Christmas Horror Volume 2 by Rick Wood

 From horror master Rick Wood, author of The Sensitives and This Book is Full of Bodies, comes ANOTHER twelve horrifying stories to spook up your Christmas season!
From a festive family of cannibals, to a terrifying present, to a psychotic Santa... here are twelve stories guaranteed to make your Christmas sick and twisted!

Features stories such as:

- The Present
- Christmas With the Cannibals
- 'Twas the Night Before Murder Part Two
- Christmas Night of the Living Dead
- Me and My Christmas Jumper
- Carolling With Killers
- Interview With Krampus November 2020
- Tiny Tim: The Trauma Years
- A Letter From Simon

It's time to bring some horror to your festivities...

I read the first volume last year and upon completion I immediately bought volume 2. I never had a chance to read it until now but as soon as I finished I ordered the new one because they seem to just get better as they go. This is a quick read at 160 pages.  I enjoyed all the stories and the illustrations too. I can't say that I cared much for the poems or reworked Christmas Carols but I did enjoy the stories.

Some of my favorites were Me and My Christmas Jumper in which a lonely, meek, and mild office worker has a drastic personality change. The Present which is written in three installments spread throughout the book, about a mysterious gift that ruins lives, and Christmas Night Of The Living Dead in which a boy who wants to hunt down zombies is made to take his poor old granny along.

Sprinkled with dark humor and seasoned with fear this second volume of Christmas Horror is the perfect recipe for a merry and macabre holiday.

4 out of 5 stars

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The End: A Zombie Story by Tim Turner

 The End is a zombie story that follows two groups of survivors through the post apocalyptic landscape. This novel has strong characters, dark humor and enough horror, suspense and gore for any true fan of the zombie genre.

The End takes place at the start of a zombie apocalypse so the survivors are many, and still learning as they go. We witness their loss of hope that loved ones might recover from being bitten, and their grief when they instead turn into zombies. The characters are likable other than a religious zealot cult leader type who believes this is all part of God's wrath against sinners. Strangers become friends as they work together for their survival and the common good. 

My only criticism would be that there was little to no conflict between them which seemed unlikely. I think some conflict would have made the story a little juicier and more realistic.

 I especially enjoyed the dark humor which gave me a chuckle more than once and local (to me) setting of Rhode Island, with familiar towns that made me feel almost as if I could look out my window and see some of the action.

This is my third read by this Indie author and I would say he is honing his skill and improving his craft with each book.

3.75 out of 5 stars. Rounding up to 4 on Goodreads.

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Ghosts of Christmas Past by Tim Martin (Editor)

 

A present contains a monstrous secret.
An uninvited guest haunts a Christmas party.
A shadow slips across the floor by firelight. A festive entertainment ends in darkness and screams.

Who knows what haunts the night at the dark point of the year? This collection of seasonal chillers looks beneath Christmas cheer to a world of ghosts and horrors, mixing terrifying modern fiction with classic stories by masters of the macabre. From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

I have been dying to read this for over a year, but my anticipation and expectation did not match the reality. I love ghost stories, especially set at Christmas time or even during winter in general when the wind is howling and the snow is drifting higher.

I mostly bought this book because of M.R. James and Neil Gaiman but as it turned out the Gaiman "story" didn't fill an entire page even though they left a ton of blank space to stretch it to the other side. The M. R. James story was written as a series of letters to someone's brother concerning their missing uncle. I may have dozed off during that one.

 Dinner For One by Jenn Ashworth was the only tale I somewhat enjoyed. It was predictable as all get out but compared to the rest of this book it was the one high note. There was really nothing scary or spine tingly even in the one story that I enjoyed although it was well written. This is definitely not what I was hoping for. You might enjoy it more than I did provided you aren't looking for a scare or anything on par with Dickens.

2 out of 5 stars