Survive the Night by Riley Sager

 

Charlie Jordan is being driven across the country by a serial killer. Maybe.

Behind the wheel is Josh Baxter, a stranger Charlie met by the college ride share board, who also has a good reason for leaving university in the middle of term. On the road they share their stories, carefully avoiding the subject dominating the news - the Campus Killer, who's tied up and stabbed three students in the span of a year, has just struck again.

Travelling the lengthy journey between university and their final destination, Charlie begins to notice discrepancies in Josh's story.

As she begins to plan her escape from the man she is becoming certain is the killer, she starts to suspect that Josh knows exactly what she's thinking.

Meaning that she could very well end up as his next victim.

Around the middle of last year this seemed to be "The Book" that everyone was either anticipating or already reading. (FOMO)Fear of missing out is what sent me to request a review copy. My request was very politely rejected, with a lovely note from the publisher telling me that their remaining review copies were being saved for book sellers or reviewers who write for major publications. I should have let that be the end of it, and we'd all be better off if I had. It's rare that someone declines my offer to read a book and that must be what made me even more determined to read it. This happened to me before where I was declined, requested elsewhere, got the book, and regretted reading it. That should have taught me a lesson. Next time I will take as a sign that the book is just not for me. This book sure was not! 

It starts off well enough. There's a killer on the loose. The Campus killer to be exact, who has murdered Charlie's friend Maddy, and left her wracked with guilt because they had been together earlier that evening. Charlie left her alone at the bar, where she was never seen alive again. Charlie, unable to cope, has decided she must leave the university IMMEDIATELY. In fact she can not even wait a couple of days for her boyfriend to drive her. She decides instead to take a ride with a total stranger, who as it turns out may or may not be the murderer. This begins a long and boring car ride broken up by a series of hallucinations that Charlie calls "seeing movies" in her head.

As someone who has a strong dislike for books or movies that suck you in and then say oops that was all just a dream, I find that I am equally disinterested in hallucinations as I am in dream sequences. The long car trip with only two characters, neither of which interested me reminded me of why I didn't like the Jeepers Creepers movie much, although they at least were not hallucinating.

You may enjoy this book more than I did, plenty of people have loved it.

2 out of 5 stars.

Congeal by John F. Leonard

 

It starts with reports on the news of an inland lake turning semi-solid.
Surely, a media joke, some lame April Fool’s prank?
The before and after pictures are vaguely ludicrous and oddly disturbing, the contrast stark and strange.
First, darkly rippling water that hints at hidden depths. Slightly spooky and perfectly normal. Next, a putrid blotch of clotted sludge which bears little resemblance to anything aquatic.

It isn’t a joke.
And pretty soon, that greasy, sickening substance isn’t confined to an inland lake.
It’s spreading. Flowing over fields and filling streets.
Each morning brings a new revelation. Countryside denuded of life and towns empty and echoing.
The night is when it changes, becomes something that consumes. Something infinitely worse than a congealed impossibility.
CONGEAL is a short tale of apocalyptic horror. How the world ends may not be how you expect. Nuclear Armageddon or a zombie apocalypse could get beaten to the punch.
Our apocalypse may come from below.
An ancient, cosmic entity bubbling up to the surface in search of food.
It’s also the story of one individual and her fight to stay afloat in a sea of despair.

Don't you hate it when your life is going along great and then the world ends? I sure do. So does Amelia. One minute she's living her happily ever after, barely concerned about some weird thickening of lake water, and the next she's running for her life from some form of gelatinous ooze that's consuming everything in it's path. Food is scarce, the power is out, and she's running out of places to hide. 

This was a fast paced post apocalyptic sort of sci fi horror. If that's your genre than I highly recommend this novella.

It put me in mind of The Blob but without the teenage goofiness. 

4 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy.

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Tethered to Darkness by Justin Holley

 

To escape her fanatically religious upbringing, Mia moves away to attend State University instead of the bible-college her family wanted. After orientation, Mia’s new friends invite her to the Para-Psychology Club, where she meets a charismatic professor, who introduces her to Astral Projection. Mia finds that her social anxiety makes her a natural at the maneuver. So, when her possessive boyfriend tracks her down, hellbent on returning her home, she escapes their possessive grip by slipping into the nether. However, while out of her body, something ancient and dark—and from her past—takes over. Forced to deal with not only the entity now using her body but also the religious extremists who have arrived to remove it, her only hope lies in the hands of her new friend Bruce and the enigmatic Professor Colista as they try to save her from a fate beyond hell.

Mia has grown up with religious fanatics for parents although she does remember when they were more party animal than religious zealot. Her church is of the opinion that everything is a sin, even something as simple as yoga or meditation. Mia's parents expect her to attend bible college but she decides to stand up for herself and attend the state university. 

With the way she has been raised, coupled with her random bouts of tears caused by her anxiety disorder it seems like living on campus would be a huge culture shock for her. Somehow she manages to fit right in. Even her sex crazed, wannabe rock star, room mate doesn't seem to phase her.

After she attends one talk on astral projection and has a quick peek at a book on the subject she succeeds in leaving her body on her very first try. Her second attempt does not end as well for her and she gets trapped outside her body when an entity moves in.

I enjoyed parts of this story but did not care for several of the characters or the way they interacted with each other. I wanted to like Mia's new friend Bruce, but the running commentary in his head put me off. I couldn't stand the roommate and it seemed weird that Mia would be hanging out with her. Pastor Matt was nauseating, though I assume he was intended to be, as was the boyfriend. The father was weak. Professor Colista grew on me but I think his cat was the only character I really cared about. The plot was clever in theory but the execution didn't quite make it.

I have enjoyed previous works by this author, and you may enjoy this one more than I did.

My thanks to Silver Shamrock Publishing for the review copy.

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The Unhallowed Horseman by Jude S. Walko

 

In a town enamored with its Unhallowed Horseman legend, a distraught teenage boy must come to terms with his personal demons, and perhaps the Horseman himself.
Set on All Hallows’ Eve, psychological thriller The Unhallowed Horseman takes place against the backdrop of a seemingly peaceful, picturesque American small town with an iconic past. The story follows Vincent, a distraught and troubled high schooler, and his descent into the demons that plague his mind.
Some things about the town and its inhabitants aren’t quite as they seem. Generations of families have been living there with a deep and dark secret, one on the verge of reincarnating itself once again.
With the help of his newfound love for classmate Lorraine, Vincent navigates the treacherous obstacles in his life. Whether it be the overbearing no-holds-barred sheriff, his tempestuous mother, or the holier-than-thou townsfolk, Vincent seems to be under constant bombardment from prying eyes. What's more, Lorraine's overprotective father, Deputy Constance, suspects Vincent of having committed some heinous crimes. 
Only after uncovering the town's history does Vincent begin to unravel its complex mystery and that of the people living there, including his own ancestors. Can he solve the mystery in time to save the people he truly loves, or will he, like others before him, fall prey to an age-old curse passed down through the centuries. The town prepares for the return of a killer legend, while one young man prepares to take on his innermost demons.
The Unhallowed Horseman is a contemporary reimagining based on characters in the American classic "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, the Father of American Literature.

Content Warning: adult and derogatory language, gore, substance abuse (drugs and alcohol), uncomfortable sexual situations (one is non-consensual assault), death, child abuse, mention of pedophilic tendencies, mention of suicide 

The Unhallowed Horseman gets off to a slow start as there are a multitude of characters to introduce. There is Vincent, a troubled teen with various mental problems, his mother Marisa who has a constant string of boyfriends barely older than her son, and maybe I should even mention her breasts since they make so many appearances in the first half of the book as to be two of the main characters. There is the perverted sheriff and pedo video store owner, there are bullies and a high school that boasts not a school counselor or psychologist but an actual psychiatrist who dispenses habit forming psychotropic drugs for free. Vincent takes pills by the handful and we are not sure at first if he is having drug induced hallucinations when he first sees the horseman or if his mental problems are the cause or if the horseman is real.
The town itself seems rather bleak, a place of neglect, abuse, and poverty. Sleepy Hollow has become a place of sex and drugs and cornstalks. Neither a nice place to live or to visit.

The pace picks up towards the middle of the story and so does the body count. I was not really able to connect with any of the characters so I may have enjoyed their deaths more than I was meant to.

This is the author's first novel and I look forward to seeing how his writing skills continue to develop in future.

3 out of 5 stars

My Thanks to Jude S. Walko for the review copy.

About the author

Jude S. Walko is a film producer (Producers Guild of America), director, screenwriter, and actor (Screen Actors Guild). Among notable works is his 2018 award-winning film The Incantation, which stars former Superman Dean Cain. Walko won the 2018 Eclipse award for Best Direction, among several other awards, for the film.
Jude has been a lifelong fan of classic literature and has a special love of all things Washington Irving. He even owns a grave plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York. Jude is passionate about Halloween, Tim Burton, stop motion animation and all things dark and mysterious.
He spends his time between Los Angeles and Thailand, where his family now resides, and has multiple film and writing projects in development.