Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Guests by Kealan Patrick Burke


 After the death of the woman who raised him and the realization that the girl he loves will never love him back, young Mark Callahan decides it's time to leave the small harbor town of Miriam's Cove for good. All that remains is one last shift at The Windcrest Hotel, a seaside resort that has seen better days.

Tonight, with a ferocious winter storm bearing down on them, there are few staff and fewer guests, until a last-minute booking takes everyone by surprise. There's a small yellow tour bus bound for The Windcrest and soon the hotel will find itself under siege by something much worse than the storm.



Mark is grieving the loss of his grandmother when the decision suddenly hits him that it's time to leave town. Grandma was the only reason he stayed so long, and the woman he is in love with has no idea how he feels because she's in love with someone else. What's worse is that she and her boyfriend are his co-workers, and it's just too painful to see them together every day. With nothing to keep him, he decides that this will be his last night at work. When we first meet his boss it made me wonder how he managed not to quit sooner!


It should have been a slow night at the hotel, what with the bitter cold and the snowstorm on the way. But some last minute travelers are booked in for the night. A group of sickly-looking elderly people have chosen this night to book their stay. They've come from a nursing home but the hotel workers are told they don't need any supervision or anyone to take care of them. 

Things get creepy-immediately upon their arrival but with the snow piling up and the phone service knocked out there really is no escape and no help is coming.

This was a quick and creepy read that explores death, grief, love, and what one may or may not be willing to do for a second chance at life.  The cast of characters is small enough to get to know everyone, and they are unique and unforgettable which, makes it easy to keep track of who they are. Winter storms are one of my favorite settings for horror novels. That claustrophobic sense of being trapped with no way to get help just gives me the heebie-jeebies every time. There were also some words of wisdom about grief and mourning which really hit home with me.

5 out of 5 stars


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Friday, April 14, 2023

Conjuring the Witch by Jessica Leonard

 

There are witches in the woods.

These are the words the reverend of the Lilin Assembly of Our Lord repeats to his parishioners each week. Steve and Nicole Warby think it’s just a metaphor, until Nicole takes a walk in those woods and comes back changed. Something came out of them with her, and the simple small-town life they’ve always known is forever altered when they discover the dark secrets buried deep and those intent on keeping them there. Fearing for his wife’s sanity, and his own comfortable status in the church, Steve is unsure if he wants to help or ignore the problems. The reverend believes there are witches in the woods, and he thinks Nicole is only the most recent.

Conjuring the Witch is a dark, haunted story about what those in power are willing to do to stay in power, and the sins we convince ourselves are forgivable.


Are there witches in the woods? Or has the reverend twisted religious dogma to his own interpretation for his own agenda? That is the question to be answered in this stunning work of horror fiction by Jessica Leonard.

Nicole Warby is searching for her niche in this world. She wants to make her husband happy and fit in with the church ladies, but she is pretty sure there must be more to life than cooking and cleaning and being submissive to her man as the reverend constantly preaches.
Her husband Steve is a sort of go-along to get along kind of guy. He wants his wife to be happy but he is also sometimes embarrassed by her behavior. 
As much as they are warned about the woods, Nicole feels something pulling her towards them. Sure they are a little dark and spooky but just maybe they have a story to tell.
Nicole is not quite the same after her venture into those woods and the congregation will never be the same either.

I loved this book! I loved Nicole and her refusal to just bow down to hypocritical oppression. The reverend gave me the creeps from the start. I could almost picture him as a smarmy sort of salesman pitching himself as speaking for God, and telling people how to run their marriage as if he had a clue about how marriage works. I can't say that it was a big surprise to find out what is really in the woods, but I didn't need it to be a shock in order to enjoy this atmospheric story. It spoke to me on so many levels.

5 out of 5 stars.

My thanks to Ghoulish Books.



Monday, April 10, 2023

Wily Writers Presents Tales of Foreboding Edited by ES Magill and Bill Bodden

 

Foreboding—the feeling that bad, or evil, awaits us at some point in our future, distant or near.

It’s like a pressure at the back of your brain, a whisper that it can all go terribly wrong. The sense of foreboding reminds us the bad is coming—but we don’t know exactly when.

Here are 14 tales where evil is nosing the chinks in the lives of the unsuspecting, searching for a way in and ready to wreak havoc. But these are no ordinary sufferings and miseries: cults, mythical forest creatures, elder gods, psychic powers, murder, parallel universes, monsters, death, nature gone awry, zombies, ghosts, and husbands.








In these 14 tales, things don’t bode well:

 

Nature figures out how to take a sinister upper hand in Bill Bodden’s “When to Let Go.”

“Coffin” by Alison J. McKenzie asks the question ‘can you exist without being alive?’

Jennifer Brozek explores the difficulty, and danger, of trying to understand one’s own mind in “A Test of Vigilance and Will.”

In “Jenny” by Lee Call, curiosity and love possess their own perils, but when they cross paths...

Yvonne Navarro’s “Meet Me On the Other Side” delves into an alternate world and explores love and sacrifice in the face of an impending apocalypse and libidinous beasts.

Which is worse—a natural disaster, a monster, or a husband—is the question at the heart of Allie Yohn’s “In the Very Air You Breathe.”

"Frostlings" by Chris Marrs gives us the definitive answer about family and love—and mythical creatures.

“Still Life With Shattered Glass” by Loren Rhoads exposes a morbid hobby, and where it leads.

Joan De La Haye’s “Getting Rid of Charlie” examines that father-daughter bonding time is very important—and can come in an aberrant form.

In “A Spectacle of a Man” by Weston Ochse, one man finds that better living can come from the Elder Gods, but it’s not going to be pretty.

“Purgatory” by Angel Leigh McCoy warns us how one mistake can last forever and forever and forever...

S.G Browne’s “Lower Slaughter” reveals how thin the veneer of reality is—and that making the bus on time is crucial.

E.S. Magill’s “Los Necrocorridos” proves that love can exist in the most horrific conditions, even in the zombie apocalypse.
These delightfully dark tales have something to offer every fan of horror or dark fiction. Tales run the gamut from mysterious towns, supernatural storms, otherworldly creatures, sex and drugs and rock and roll. 
Among my favorites were
Lisa Morton’s High Desert in which a woman comes to regret a visit to an abandoned cult compound in the desert, S.G Browne’s Lower Slaughter in which a vacationing couple veer off the beaten path on their last day before they head home. Coffin by Alison J. McKenzie was probably the most unique story about a young man with Cotard's syndrome and the brother who mistakenly thinks he can help him snap out of it. A children's story becomes a nightmare for a grief-stricken woman in Frostlings.
There are lots of spooky moments and of course a general sense of foreboding throughout. 
4 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy.




Thursday, April 6, 2023

Coffin Shadows, by Mark Steensland and Glen Krisch


 12 years ago Janet Martlee’s infant son died under mysterious circumstances. Consumed with grief and anger, she ran away to start again...


Yesterday, a12-year old boy with dead eyes appeared in her classroom, begging for help. But Janet doesn’t believe in ghosts...


Today, her psychiatrist tells her she must return home to confront her past and uncover the mystery of what happened...

Only some questions don’t want to be answered. And some answers hide in the shadows...





Life seems to be going pretty well for Janet, although she is struggling with her feelings about her pregnancy due to the traumatic loss of her first baby. She's in a stable relationship, has a good job, and a best friend who would do anything for her. 

Everything in her life would be perfectly rosy if not for the parts of her past she can not remember and the sudden appearance of what looks like the corpse of a 12 year old boy that is watching and stalking her. 

Her therapist tells her she must return home, to her parents from whom she has been estranged for years, in order to seek out the truth about what happened to her baby. The therapist believes that confronting her past will rid her of these visions of a dead child.

This was a fast-paced, chilling read in which some secrets are horrifying but uncovering them can be deadly. The suspense kept my blood pounding but the shocking climax nearly stopped my heart! There is an old expression "You can't go home again" but maybe what is really meant by that is don't go back if you were lucky enough to escape the first time.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Cemetery Dance