Mouse Trap by Caryn Larrinaga

 Death haunts the Scott family home.
Twenty years ago, Dakota Scott’s baby brother died falling down the back stairs. Twenty-four hours ago, her older brother, Lennox, wasted away into nothing in the same house. Two deaths, just floors apart, yet no one suspects a connection.

Settling Lennox’s affairs lures Dakota back to the family’s old Victorian home overlooking Astoria. It has changed over the years—what was once a happy home is now filled with sadness, strange memories, and lights that won’t stay lit.

In the ever-growing darkness, a sinister force has awakened from a long slumber, and it is far from finished with Dakota. Her life and sanity hang in the balance—alongside everything she holds dear.

Fans of Shirley Jackson, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Elizabeth Engstrom will love the quiet horror in this modern gothic tale.

Dakota and her adoptive parents return to their former home to settle affairs and pack up belongings after her brother's sudden death in the house. They all knew he did not like to go out but his funeral drives that point home when the attendees are people he only ever knew from the internet.

Dakota and her parents have never recovered from the first death in the home 20 years ago. The house was meant to be a place full of love and laughter. They had planned to adopt many more children, adding on bedrooms as needed. After the death of their toddler staying in the home became unbearable, and the thought of more children was just too painful. Everyone eventually went their separate ways and only Lennox stayed behind, never wanting to leave the house.

Dakota is wracked with guilt over not having visited Lennox more, and when she learns the reason why he never left the house it's all the more heartbreaking.

Mouse Trap is more a story of grief and loss than the scares I was expecting.

It's heavy with guilt and regret, loneliness and despair. I would recommend it for fans of more subtle horror with a dose of family drama as opposed to anyone looking for chills.

Get a copy

About the author

Angel Falls by Julia Rust and David Surface

 

What if you had the power to bring back someone you lost?

Fifteen-year-old Jessie Reed would do anything to keep her parents together. But when her father inherits an old house from mysterious Cousin Dorothy, Jessie accompanies him to the seaport village of Beauport, while her mother stays behind in New York City.

Jessie stumbles across the isolated trails of Angel Falls, a wild and beautiful place that holds the ruins of a three- hundred-year-old town with a strange history. There she encounters Jared Younger, a sixteen-year-old local boy who considers these forbidden woods his own.

Jared feels powerless to save his father, an artist crippled by depression—until a series of unexplainable events brings him face to face with a power he never knew he had. Jared’s teacher, Chris Delany offers to help him control the strange thing that’s happening to him—but are Delany’s motives as pure as they seem? Or, as Jessie suspects, does Delany have a secret agenda of his own that puts Jared in danger?

Jessie and Jared discover that the truth is far more dangerous than they could have imagined.

I was happy to be invited to read this young adult novel with the gorgeous cover and intriguing synopsis. 

Angel Falls is a poignant coming-of-age tale with supernatural overtones, told from the alternating points of view of two young teens, Jessie and Jared.

It will definitely be a summer to remember for Jessie Reeds. First love, family secrets, spooky woods, and more await her in the seaside town of Beauport where she stays with her father to settle the estate of a recently deceased relative. Here she hopes to reunite her parents before the permanent split she fears is coming. 

Jared is a teenage resident of the village who is desperately trying to support himself and his father as they fall deeper and deeper under a mountain of bills that no child could possibly pay alone.

Jared's father has succumbed to such a deep depression he is no longer a functional parent.

When Jared and Jessie meet they will uncover secrets in both of their pasts as well as a strange dark history of the village. Between the two of them they may have the power to make their fondest wishes come true but at what cost?

I feel like I knew these characters, almost like I watched Jessie and Jared move on from childhood to maturity. I had a lot of sympathy for them both as I watched them longing to change things that could have been, and finally learning that we must all accept the reality of the way things are instead of how we wish they could be.

This was a bittersweet tale of loss and loss, and growing up.

4 out of 5 stars

Get a copy

Visit the author's websites

Julia Rust

David Surface

DMV by Bentley Little

 Successful author Todd Klein and his wife Rosita live a quiet small-town life. Todd's latest novel is selling well and despite recent budget cuts, Rosita relishes her job at the local library. After years of marriage, they're still in love, the mortgage to their suburban home is paid off, and their future is bright. Until that is, Todd makes an appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew his license.

Jorge Guiterrez, Rosita's younger brother, hasn't been so lucky. A few months earlier, his bad temper finally caught up with him. After arguing with a supervisor, Jorge quit his cushy job and hasn't been able to find a new one. The bills are piling up and his wife is starting to pressure him. Until, one day, he is approached by a pair of mysterious strangers with an even more mysterious job offer...at the DMV.

Zal Tombasian, a young programmer at Data Initiatives, has a pretty boring existence. As his friend and co-worker Bernard tells him, "Your social life consists of sitting at home eating junk food and playing online games." Zal doesn't even bother to put up an argument. He's never been much for adventure. Until his company is hired to work on their largest account yet...by the DMV.

With his latest novel, Bentley Little's savage satire is on full display as he takes on everyone's worst nightmare, the DMV.

Two married couples and a team of computer programmers have their lives turned upside down by an encounter with the DMV.

I am a huge Bentley Little fan. I have read everything he ever wrote. That is not to say that every book has been a perfect hit with me, but he knocks it out of the park often enough to stay high on my list of must-read authors.

If you have never read this author before then I should warn you first that you can't expect a whole lot of realistic scenarios. 

What you can expect is an everyday ordinary event to turn into something outrageous and over the top in a most entertaining and terrifying way.

This time it all revolves around the DMV where something as simple as renewing your license can lead to kidnapping, imprisonment, death, or worse. Where taking your written test has nothing to do with the rules of the road and the consequences of failure are far worse than having to rely on public transportation.

Bentley Little's DMV is not just a government-run nuisance, notorious for long wait times and workers on a power trip. This DMV is an all-seeing all-knowing entity that has existed long before cars or trucks and it is out to get you. "All Hail The DMV"

This book is now among my favorites by this author. It is equal parts hilarious and horrifying and I loved every insane minute of this darkly humorous delight.

This is Bentley Little at his mind-blowing best.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Cemetery Dance Publications.

Available for pre-order

About the author

All Hallows by Christopher Golden

 With the 80's nostalgia of Stranger Things, this horror drama from NYT bestselling author Christopher Golden follows neighborhood families and a mysterious, lurking evil on one Halloween day.

It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man. There’s a small clearing in the woods now that was never there before, and a blackthorn tree that doesn’t belong at all. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them...and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road?

As a Halloween loving horror fan who grew up in the 80s, I was giddy with excitement over the description of this book. Pair that with the fact that the setting is a fictional town called Coventry as I sat here reading it from my home in an actual town called Coventry and the anticipation was almost more than my little dark heart could handle.

I love holiday themed horror, especially when that holiday is Halloween. So I wondered, could All Hallows possibly live up to my expectations? 

YES! This is my first 5 star read of the year. 

A perfect blend of nostalgia, realism and the supernatural collide on Parmenter Road where the nice guys, the racists, the bigots, and the hypocrites coexist as neighbors. There were characters I loved and characters I loved to hate. I felt like this could be any town in 1980s New England including my own. In the midst of The neighborhood Haunted Woods attraction, and the annual Halloween festivities, something uninvited stirs on this special night when the veil is thin. A doorway opens and something comes through to crash the party. As marriages crumble and friendships are tested, peculiar children not of this world walk this final October Eve, blending in with the trick-or-treaters, and begging for help.  Not all will survive the night.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press

Get a copy

Visit the author's website