Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #12 Christmas Bloody Christmans

 This movie (streaming on Netflix) is not what I thought it was.  I thought it was the David Harbour Christmas horror movie, which is actually Violent Night.  This one is The Terminator as played by a Santa robot.

The plot is straightforward.  The military, having successfully built combat robots to fight overseas wars, has sold their robotics technology to various corporations.  One such company has made the "RoboSanta+" for toy stores and malls, doing away with the need for Santas-for-hire.  In some small town, one of those RoboSantas (played by an unrecognizable Abraham Benrubi (from ER!)) wakes up in its Main Street toy store and starts a very violent, very bloody rampage.  And it is a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking indie record store owner who is left to fight him.

CBC is a low budget flick, looking like it was shot on location in town and in various homes.  The number of f-bombs dropped far surpasses Deadwood's own impressive total and I wonder how much dialogue was ad-libbed.  This movie looks like it was a lot of fun to shoot.  It is brutally violent, with a penchant for splitting rubber heads down the middle with a big axe; the practical effects are old school and pretty gnarly.  It was original and quite a change from a lot of the cookie-cutter horror films out there now.  That said, when I paused the movie to see how much time was left, I was surprised that only an hour had gone by (it's around 90 minutes total) - it seemed to take forever.  I liked it okay but don't know that I can really recommend it to anyone.

Funnily enough, for a movie about a murderous rampaging Santa robot, for me the most unbelievable part of the whole thing was that a town that size was able to support an indie record store.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 The Dead Don't Die

 I knew nothing about The Dead Don't Die going into it.  Well, I mean, zombies, but other than that.  And then, as the titular theme song (good song) rolled over the opening credits, my jaw dropped at the cast. Huge cast, so many names!  And then the director: Jim Jarmusch.  And then I understood the huge cast.  I've never actually seen a Jim Jarmusch movie (until now) and so I don't know if TDDD is exemplary of his style.  But I'm guessing it is, with the deadpan absurdity, the repetition, the fourth wall breaks.  Afterwards, I think that I had read something online about Jarmusch doing a zombie movie but I certainly hadn't made the connection.

Here's the cast:  Bill Murray (small town chief of police), Adam Driver (cop), Chloe Sevigny (cop), Tilda Swinton (Scottish undertaker/ninja/SPOILER); Steve Buscemi (racist farmer); Danny Glover (hardware store owner); Tom Waits (hobo/narrator); Selena Gomez (Cleveland* hipster); Austin Butler (Cleveland hipster*); Iggy Pop (zombie); Carol Kane (zombie); Rosie Perez (news anchor); RZA (delivery driver).

Here's the plot: due to fracking at both poles (the U.S. Dept. of Energy says it's TOTALLY FINE), the earth has shifted off its axis, fucking everything up and causing zombies to rise up and wreck havor.  On the plus side, they're the slow-moving types, easy to kill but overwhelming in numbers.  On the negative side, ZOMBIES.

Is it a good zombie movie**?  It's okay, a little slow but with decent zombie makeup, nice humor sprinkled with legitimate gore.   Is is a good Jim Jarmusch movie?  You tell me.

* No disrespect intended, as I was born in Cleveland but left shortly thereafter and never went back, but does Cleveland even have hipsters?

** Apparently a LOT of zombie movie fans hated this movie, but I do think JJ was attempting some sort of satire, which, as the OG George Romero would tell you, is always a good thing for zombie movies.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #10 The Lost Boys

 Here I was, thinking that this was going to be a throwaway post.  I re-watched The Lost Boys (in my head, it's just Lost Boys) last night because a coworker and I were talking about appropriate horror movies for his fourteen year old daughter.  He's been slowly introducing her to things like Poltergeist and Alien and she is NOT impressed when he squirms and jumps at these iconic movies - that TERRIFIED ALL OF US back in the day.  I suggested The Lost Boys and he was like, ooh good one, and I wondered if she'd balk at the 80s of it all, and he said that she loves Stranger Things, and I said well, I have it on DVD if you have something still to play DVDs on, and he's like, OF COURSE I DO.  But then that night, at home, I thought I should rewatch it to see if it really is appropriate for a fourteen year old because it's rated R and what the hell do I know about what a fourteen year old should watch.

And here's why I thought it would be a throwaway post because I LOVE The Lost Boys and I rewatch it a lot and I was sure that I had done a post here about it within the last couple of years.  But I can't find a post.  And I think maybe I've never included it in a Scarelicious post?

ANYWAY The Lost Boys is AWESOME and you should watch it, or watch it again.  It came out in 1987 and it is soooooooooo 80s - but like real 80s.  It was largely filmed in Santa Cruz (California), on its boardwalk, and you can tell - especially in the opening bits - that these are real folks, not actors: punks, New Wavers, dudes in Speedos, street kids.  The soundtrack is amazing and I'm pretty sure I bought it on cassette when the movie came out.

It's a vampire flick - nearly a horror-comedy with some serious 80s music video style (Joel Schumacher was the director, if that tells you anything).  And it has some surprisingly brutal violence in one or two scenes, something that I always forget in the face of all that hair and shoulder pads and Kiefer Sutherland's bleached-blond snarling and the beauty that is that era's Jason Patric.  The cast is amazing: Kiefer and Jason, plus the Coreys (Haim and Feldman), and Jamie Gertz, and Dianne Weist, and Alex Winter (of Bill and Ted fame), and Edward Herrmann (of Gilmore Girls fame).  Basically, a divorced mom and her two boys move in with her father, in a seaside town that is overrun with vampires.  That's all you need to know about the plot.  Seriously, I adore this movie.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #9 I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

 I have seen the OG, 1997 I Know What You Did Last Summer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt (Julie James), Freddie Prinze Jr. (Ray), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Helen Shivers) and Ryan Phillippe (Whatsisname).  It came out a year after Scream, intent on capitalizing on that stunner's success; IKWYDLS was a decent slasher but not nearly as good as Scream.  And so when I learned that they'd done a new installment in the series (the 1997 one, 1998's I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, 2006's I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (which I definitely did not see)), I was like, oh, is that still a thing?  And yet, as far as decent series with diminishing returns goes, this most recent I Know holds up okay.

In 2024, Ava returns to her hometown of Southport, South Carolina, for her BFF Danica's engagement party.  Also there are members of her high school clique: Danica's fiance Teddy and Ava's ex Milo, plus Stevie, a townie who never got to leave Southport to go to college.  It's July 4th and the five decide to drive up to "Reaper's Corner," a cliffside road above the South Carolina coast (with those rocky cliffs, that's definitely not SC's coast).  Goofing around, a little high on booze and weed, they cause a truck to go over the side of the cliff.  Teddy convinces everyone not to tell what happened and they all go about their separate ways with varying degrees of guilt.

One year later, Ava is back in town for Danica's bridal shower: different fiance, as Teddy got really weird after the accident.  Then Danica gets an anonymous note - I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER - and the bodies start stacking up like cordwood.  In over her head, Ava learns that back in 1997, there was another serial killer killing people in Southport: she does some digging and tracks down SPOILER Julie James (JLH, reprising her role from the first two movies).  Also still in town is Ray (FPJr.) and SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER the vampire slayer herself, SMG, reprises her role of long-deceased Croaker Queen Helen Shivers.

The body count is decent (I counted seven); the Final Girl(s) acquit themselves well.  And the ending SPOILER SPOILER sets up yet another movie with Julie James at the center.  Good for you, JLH!  I Know What You Did Last Summer is a perfectly adequate slasher that I found entertaining, with a splash of late 90s nostalgia thrown in for good measure.  I didn't find it scary - I don't seem to be finding many of these movies scary these days, which either says something about the movies I'm selecting or my current unease with the state of the workd - but I certainly didn't regret watching it.

Why does everyone have their

butts to the camera here?

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 28 Years Later

 The third in the 28 installment ... having loved 28 Days Later and liked 28 Weeks Later quite well, to say that I was looking forward to Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later was an understatement.  Now, having watched it, was it worth the wait?  I think so, but I also can understand the ire I've seen from viewers who were expecting more of the same from the "rage zombie" situation.

Synopsis: Twenty-eight years after Londoners unwittingly unleashed the rage virus on an unsuspecting Great Britain, the world has managed to contain the virus to the British Isles.  Great Britain is under quarantine, its surrounding waters surrounded by other country's navies.  No one is allowed off the British Isles and the denizens have been left to fend for themselves.  The residents of Holy Island are doing better than most: connected to the mainland by a causeway that is only accessible at low tide, with deadly rip currents otherwise, the folk there are doing okay, in a just-above-medieval lifestyle sort of way.  (They are a little weird religously but understandable.)  They do have a tradition of sending youth to the mainland when they are 14-15, to learn to kill the infected.  

Young Spike, age 12, is old for his age in many ways (dealing with a sick mum); his dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, unrecognizable) takes him over for his field trip.  Spike successfully kills a couple of slow ones (fat, sluglike, crawling on their bellies) but gets overwhelmed by the fast ones (the regular rage zombies) and both he and his dad are chased back to their island by an "alpha" - bigger, stronger and slightly smarter than the other infected.  Back home, however, his mum (Jodie Comer) is worse and Spike devises a plan to sneak back to the mainland with her to confer with a nearby crazy doctor (Ralph Fiennes).

Are there gross and scary rage zombies?  Yes.  Does the alpha like to pull the heads off of people and animals?  Yes.  Was I at ever time scared of the infected or worried that our heroes might not make it?  No, not at all.  27YL is not actually scary.  It's more like an Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz journey for Spike and his mum, wandering through beautiful landscapes and meeting really weird and/or dangerous people.  I loved it, although it isn't the zombie movie that most people were expecting.  And the very ending fell a little flat, as it is clearly setting things up for the next film.  But this was not what I thought I was going to be seeing and I appreciated it all the more for that.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #7 Fear Street: Prom Queen

 Oops!  Missed a couple of days - was trying for the every other day posting thing - sorry.  And, unfortunately, this one won't have been worth waiting for.  I REALLY need to get myself a Shudder subscription because the mainstream horror streamers have been uninspiring, to say the least.  I was poking around on Netflix (having recently given up our Hulu/Disney/HBO scrip and being unwilling to sign my "smart tv" onto my Amzn account for the Prime offerings): I'm fixing to dive into the new 28 Years this weekend but needed a midweek watch.  And I landed on Fear Street: Prom Queen.  

I've watched a couple other of these R.L. Stine Fear Streets.  I know they're for the tweens.  I've never read any of the books and I don't know if it's important to have seen all of the Fear Street movies - I suspect not, but I also think there were some callbacks/references that I missed.  Regardless, I have been in the mood for some 80s horror and this was ... sort of that.

Set in 1988, at the Shadyside High School prom, we've got a slasher flick whose masked killer is working his/her way through the prom queen candidates, and their dates, and a whole bunch of adjacent fodder.  The plot is pretty simple: a mean girl, her coterie and an outsider are all in the running for Prom Queen.  The outsider has family baggage and a weird BFF, but used to be friends with - and now has a crush on - the mean girl's boyfriend.  A whole bunch of people get hacked to pieces - mad props to the guillotine paper cutter! - and SPOILER the outsider girl does actually get to be Prom Queen.

Look, at the risk of aging myself, I literally was the class of 1988.  And my high school/prom looked nothing like this.  Budget is probably an issue but at best, the costuming was a combination 80s/90s.  The music was okay but the hair was way off.  Kudos to nabbing Lili Taylor, Chris Klein and Katherine Waterston to play the adults.

In a nutshell, not a complete waste of time: meh acting, decent body count/gore, not scary.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #6 The Blackening

 Actually, I tried to watch I Saw the TV Glow first.  I failed.  It was stylish and vibey and a little creepy.  But it was also SO SLOW that I got tired of falling asleep in the middle of it and gave up.

So, The Blackening instead, which is not at all slow but a very clever, very funny horror comedy.  You know the horror trope where the black character gets killed first in the slasher movie?  Well, the black main characters know it too:  "We can't all die first."

The plot is that a group of college friends reunite ten years after graduation, going to a cabin (pretty fancy cabin) in the woods for card and board games, drinking, party drugs and catching up.  Once they get there, however, they are targeted by a racistly-masked, crossbow-carrying bad guy who starts picking them off.  What happens next is a rapid fire, hilarious and also true-feeling demonstration of black culture and black horror film culture.  The cast knows the assignment and has tremendous chemistry; the pacing is brisk.  The Blackening isn't at all scary but it is massively entertaining.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #5 The Monkey

 As noted here before, Stephen King adaptations are hit or miss, despite how good his books are.  His short story collection, Skeleton Crew, out in a fortieth (!) anniversary edition, contains three stories that have been made into movies: The Mist, done by Frank Darabont, a strong showing with an even more brutal ending than the story; and The Raft, the best and grossest part of Creepshow 2.  And now comes the third, The Monkey, by Oz Perkins, in an absolute departure from that director's usual oeuvre.  

Here's what the movie has in common with the short story: brothers Hal and Bill; and a toy monkey that is a harbinger/brings about death, including orphaning the brothers.  What's different? Pretty much everything else, from the monkey having a drum (instead of cymbals), to Bill being a huge asshole and Hal hating him, to Hal's son Petey being a complete dickhead, to the sheer number of deaths, to how they end up getting rid of the monkey.

This is not the worst SK adaptation but it doesn't rank up there with the better ones.  Perkins has made a gleefully mean-spirited little flick, clearly relishing the opportunity to not be as moody as his prior movies.  There is a nice callback via naming the brothers' babysitter Annie Wilkes.  Some of the kills are clever and funny (lawnmower, tea kettle, snake, vape, wasps and an excellent schoolbus situation).  The Monkey isn't scary and while there are funny bits, it isn't a horror-comedy - the tone just seems a little uneven.  Nice mix of actors: Theo James, Adam Scott, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood and Oz Perkins himself as "Uncle Chip."

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #4 Final Destination: Bloodlines

 You know, I don't know if I've actually ever watched any of the Final Destination movies.  Maybe the first one, ages and ages ago.  And I've certainly seen that iconic log truck disaster scene from #2.  But from what I've read, as the series went on, it largely devolved into one splashy/grisly Rube Goldberg sequence after another.  I'd had some recommendations for the latest installment, FD:B, and thought I'd give it a go.

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD.  The opener has young Iris and her fella, Paul, enjoying opening night at the new Skyview Tower (think Seattle Spaceneedle).  It doesn't go all that well, although better than it could have due to Iris's premonition that enables her to save folks.  But anyone who has seen a FD movie knows that you can't cheat Death.  Iris manages to survive for decades, hidden and paranoid, but then Death comes for her, picking off not only her but - because Iris was pregnant at the time of the Skyview incident - also all her descendants because they aren't supposed to exist.  Carnage ensues.  

The cold open disaster is pretty operatic, with both CGI and practicall effects.  The subsequent kills are very bloody and creative, some squirm-laugh-inducing and sometimes just squirm-inducing.  While it certainly sticks to the formula that made the series famous, FD:B is fun, splashily gory, funny and shows sparks of heart, including a poignant send-off to Tony Todd in his last on-screen role.  Dunno if I'll seek out the rest of them, but this most recent one is worth the time.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #3 Death of a Unicorn

Here's the best thing about Death of a Unicorn: its cast.  Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Richard E. Grant, Tea Leoni, Will Poulter, Anthony Carrigan.  The rest of everything about this movie? Bad.  It's pretty bad.

As father (PR) and daughter (JO) are on their way to meet with PR's ultrawealthy clients, they hit a baby unicorn with their car.  They don't kill it - although they think they do after PR tries to put it out of its misery with a tire iron - and they put it into their car, rather than leaving it on the side of the road.  That evening, it becomes evident that unicorn blood has healing powers, having splashed all over PR and JO during the tire iron incident, and subsequently curing her acne and his nearsightedness and allergies.  The client family are pharma-douches, and the patriarch (REG) is dying from cancer, so when the baby unicorn busts its way out of their car, they kill it (again) to use its blood to cure him.  Everyone is very excited about all the money they're going to make - except for JO, who is sad - and they don't notice the parent unicorns coming to avenge their baby.

The unicorns are all CGI (there may have been one practical effect late in the game for a closeup) and it's very bad.  It isn't scary and because the CGI is so awful, the gore is lame too, except for when TL gets her guts pulled out by the papa unicorn.  Will Poulter is quite good and funny as the insufferable rich kid but Paul Rudd seems miscast.  Terrible movie with really nothing to redeem it, cannot recommend.  I mean, this poster is cool though.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #2 Heart Eyes

 I have a friend from grade school (!!!!) who has been urging me to watch Heart Eyes.  We both love horror movies, and although they have a higher tolerance for jump scares and really nasty stuff than I do, and they didn't like Midsommar (!!!?!), I tend to seek out their recommendations.  It's on Netflix, for those interested.

The movie dives right into it: over the past couple of years, a serial killer has been targeting couples on Valentine's Day in different cities.  Now it's February 14 in Seattle, and the ol' Heart Eyes Killer (or "HEK" for short) is at it again, making mincemeat of a couple in their tacky, staged "surprise" proposal at a local winery.  The bride-to-be gets squishy in a grape press, to good effect.  Oh.  Spoiler.

Going on at the same time, Alli is struggling in her advertising job and her ruthless boss has brought in a ringer, Jay.  Of course, just before the big meeting, Alli and Jay have a meet-cute in a coffee shop, so things are awkward.  Jay asks Ally out for dinner so they can work on the replacement ad pitch and while they're there, HEK picks them out for murderin'.  "But we're not a couple!" they shriek, as the maniac chases them.

Heart Eyes is pretty cute for a horror film, billed as a horror rom-com.  While it isn't scary or even at all tense, some of the kills are pretty bloody.  I thought the killer's mask was cool with its light-up eyes.  I liked the female lead and it was nice to see Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster pop up as detectives investigating the Seattle HEK murders, in callbacks to some late 90s/early 00s horror (Final Destination and The Faculty, respectively.

Sixteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #1 Longlegs

We ended last year's October movie series with a Nicolas Cage movie and by heck we're going to start this year's off with one too!

After young FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, from It Follows) has an accurate and unusual hunch right before her partner gets killed, she gets reassigned to a serial killer case.  The senior agent (Blair Underwood) is hoping her sixth sense will help them solve the string of ten different families being murdered under very strange circumstances.  More than that, Harker finds that she is connected to the case, which is confirmed by a recently re-awakened mental patient (Kiernan Shipka) and Harker's own mother (Alicia Witt), who seems just this side of disturbed herself.

Nicolas Cage plays Longlegs, the Big Bad (NOT A SPOILER), of course.  He is nearly unrecognizable under the make-up and he is very creepy.  Maika Monroe is terrific: tense, angular, innocent, awkward, horrified, contained.

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins (Psycho's Anthony Perkins's kid), Longlegs is unsettling,  moody, slowly paced and weird as fuck, punctuated with startling bursts of violence.  Oz Perkins is making a name for himself with sophisticated, uber-atmospheric horror: see also The Blackcoat's Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Gretel & Hansel).  And this one is at the top of the list. 

August reads

It's only September 6 and already August seems so long ago.  Here's what I read way back when.

• Senseless by Ronald Malfi.  A horror thriller set in Los Angeles, this has three storylines that sort of come together at the end.  One follows a cop, trying to solve some gruesome murders; one follows a soon-to-be trophy wife whose soon-to-be husband isn't quite who he says he is; and the third is about a mentally unstable dude who thinks he's a human fly.  Didn't love it.
• The Ruins by Scott Smith.  Way back in 2008, I reviewed the movie made out of this horror novel.  The book is decent and now I feel like I want to see the movie again.
• This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger.  An American epic, loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, about four Great Depression-era orphans escaping from a Native American boarding school.  Pretty good.
• Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman.  The author, daughter of Tony Hillerman, continues her dad's Leaphorn and Chee series with a focus on Navajo policewoman Bernadette Manualito, Jim Chee's wife, out to solve the case after Joe Leaphorn is shot.
• Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear.  In which I discover the wonderful British murder mystery series with psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs at the center.  This first book introduces us to the remarkable Maisie, who worked her way up from household help to WWI nurse to astute investigator.  In addition to the protagonist being a great character, I am not as familiar with the Great War as I should be, so the history is interesting too.  Loved it.  And am now working my way through the rest of the series.
• Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear.  Several years later, Maisie has now set up shop for herself, hired an assistant, Billy Beale, whom she first met as a nurse during the war, and is hired to track down a runaway heiress.  Loved it.
• Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear.  In the third book of the series, Maisie is forced to revisit her time in France during the war when she is hired to prove that her clients' son really died in combat.  Again, loved it.
• Shadowland by Peter Straub.  Described as "if Harry Potter were written for adults," this one has boarding school, malevolent sorcerors, blood and carnage.  When I was reading it whilst waiting for a car inspection, the cashier gushed about how much she loved it.  I was more meh about it.
• Malice House by Megan Shepherd.  Horror fantasy with art and books.  Protagonist and broke artist Haven has to clean out her famous author dad's home (the titular Malice House) after his death.  She uncovers a hitherto unknown manuscript containing new fairytales and decides to craft illustrations for some posthumous publishing.  Then things start going bump in the night.
• The Paleontologist by Luke Dumas.  Abducted sisters, creepy museums and dinosaurs.  I mean, what more do you need?
• Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear.  This time, now in 1931, Maisie is hired to investigate the death of a controversial artist.  Meanwhile, Britain is struggling with the legacy of WWI at home and the growing unrest in Germany and Italy.  I didn't love this one quite as much as the first three, but still quite, quite good.  I do love a British murder mystery.

There are eighteen Maisie Dobbs books (so far), so expect more of that to come.  

July reads

 Of the nine books I read in July, I really liked three of them and didn't hate any.  That's pretty good, right?

• Sunshine by Robin McKinley.  Magical humans, conflicted vampires, delicious pastry - I loved this award-winning fantasy.
• Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica.  Since I had mostly liked Local Woman Missing, I thought I'd try another one by Kubica.  Didn't like this thriller as much but it was okay.  (Spoiler: they're not really the nicest.)
• The Butcher's Daughter by Corinne Leigh Clark and David Demchuk.  The "hitherto untold story of Mrs. Lovett," from Sweeney Todd.  I thought this was great fun, grim and dire and funny and bloody.
• Phaedra by Laura Shepperson.  There sure do seem to be a lot of new novels retelling/re-interpreting Greek myths these days.  I used to be obsessed with Greek mythology growing up so I am enjoying revisiting the stories this way.  This novel is a much more woman-positive retelling of Phaedra's story than most.
• William by Mason Coile.  This novella is part of my local library's summer reading program so I just picked it up on a whim.  Psychological horror + robots.  Not my favorite but it wasn't long.
• Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher.  This is the third one that I just loved, a fantasy/fairy tale about the third daughter who must complete impossible tasks to save her older sister from an evil husband.  What it really is about, however, is found family.
• Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher.  Another fairy tale, this time a hero-swapped version of Sleeping Beauty.  
• The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo.  A historical fantasy, set in Madrid during the Spanish Inquisition, this one focuses on Luzia, a Jewish servant who has to hide both her faith and her magic.  Most online reviews describe this one as a "slow burn," and I would agree with that; it took me a while to get into it but I was down for the ride by the end.
• Survivor by Tabitha King.  (Yes, TK is Stephen King's wife.)  After an automobile accident, Kissy Mellors's life is changed irrevocably.  This one felt like it could have used some ruthless editing.  There's no real plot to speak of, just meandering along through the protagonists' lives; Kissy (oh god I hate that name) makes terrible, inexplicable decisions about men and has lots of fairly explicit s3x (which is fine, but just be warned); and the very ending seems abrupt and from a totally different book.  Meh.

June reads

 Holy moly it's been so long since I read these books and then finally got around to posting about them that I have almost entirely forgotten what most of them are about.  Luckily there's the internet (and not, might I add, fucking AI which - has everyone forgotten about Terminator?).

• The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik.  #2 in the series (see A Deadly Education in my last post).  Loved it.
• The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik.  #3/last in the series (see above re same).  Also loved it.  Good fun.
• Buried Deep by Naomi Novik.  I'm on quite a NN tear, aren't I?  This is a collection of ghost stories.  Mixed bag.  Liked it, didn't love it.  Short stories are hard, y'all, but when they're good, they're great.
• Where I End by Sophie White.  Dark and disturbing, set on an isolated Irish island where Aoileann and her grandmother care for her disabled mother.  This one is brutal.  And the narrator, while deprived and abused, is unlikeable.  
• Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey.  After getting a call from her estranged mother, Vera Crowder comes home to care for her.  It's more complicated than that, though, because Vera's now-deceased father, whom she loved and who loved her, was a serial killer.  Her mother has been trading on that notoriety and all kinds of sketchy folks are attracted to it.  The characters are all interesting but unlikeable and things take a supernatural turn towards the end.  Meh.
• The Witch of Colchis by Rosie Hewlett.  There seems to be a recent surge of modern novelists taking a stab at ancient Greek mythology (just wait 'til the July reads).  I have a particular fondness for Medea, having done my senior Classics essay on her.
• Still Life by Sarah Winman.  I loved this one: set mostly in Florence, Italy, beginning at the end of WWII, this novel is about found family, art, luck, love and spies.
• The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny.  The nineteenth book in the Armand Gamache series, this one is a bit of a cliffhanger, to be finished with The Black Wolf.  Not necessary one of the strongest of Penny's mystery series but this one does bring back characters from previous books, for those who enjoy a callback.
• Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica.  Mystery thriller.  Eleven years after she and her mom and another, unrealted woman go missing, Delilah reappears in the town she used to live in with her family, after having been locked in a cellar since she was a little girl.  Her reappearance overjoys her grieving father, annoys her little brother (who had preferred being an only child) and calls into question everything about the missing women.  Twisty.  I really enjoyed it right up until the ending.

So what sort of summer reads are you enjoying?

May reads

 Only eight this month.

• 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill.  This volume of short stories is a re-read.  Hill is, I think, as good at spooky short stories as his dad is.
• The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay.  And I think this one may be a re-read too, although I sure didn't think I had read it ... until I started it.  Brutal, heart-rending novel about a family on vacation and the dangerous home invaders who insist that one of them (the family) must choose to die in order to avoid the impending apocalypse.  Like, immediately.
• Sign Here by Claudia Lux (that must be a pen name, right?).  A mid-level desk jockey in Hell is on the verge of a promotion if he can just manage to get the right humans to sell their souls.  Uneven in tone, clever concept.
• Tin Man by Sarah Winman.  I really liked this one, character-driven and realistic, with nary a witch, warlock or dragon in sight.  Ellis and Michael meet as boys and grow up together.  Neither's life turns out quite as they thought but it turns out that chosen family is sometimes the very best family.
• Elemental Forces is another horror short story collection by various authors.  Mixed bag, much like the anthology movies I have such a weakness for.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.  The first book in the series, impoverished Feyre kills a wolf to help support her family.  The wolf is a faerie in disguise, however, and Feyre is whisked away to atone.  Her captor is, of course, tall and handsome and tormented.
• Time's Mouth by Edan Lepucki.  Set in mystical California, this book has multiple generations, a women-centric cult and time travel of a sort.  Each section is from a different character's POV; I liked Opal's best.
• A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.  I may have read this one before - parts seemed awfully familiar - but this is great fun.  A boarding school for sorcerors where the school itself is actively trying to kill its students and the narrator is resisting turning into a world-destroying dark mage.  Funny, snarky, gory and immediately engaging.  The second in the series will be my first book ready in June.

April reads

 I'm late!  Which is hilarious, given how rarely I post on this little blog anymore.  But we were on vacation in the desert for ten days at the end of April/beginning of May and I read a bunch of books in between outdoors things and drinking (also sometimes outdoors), and then we came home and I got overwhelmed by laundry and real life and here we are, way late in sharing what I read in April.  Pluswhich, it's been so long I don't know how much I remember any of them.

• A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher.  I keep trying to read her older stuff but this is the newest one.  When your mom's an evil sorceress, it makes things difficult for everyone.  All the reviews say this is a "dark retelling of the Brothers Grimms' Goose Girl, but I don't really remember that one either.
• Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay.  Told by a somewhat unreliable narrator, this riff on a cursed movie tells the story of the making of an ultralow budget 1990s cult horror movie among a group of friends.  Unsettling for sure.
• Holly by Stephen King.  Holly Gibney returns to solve more murders in this mystery-horror mashup.  She's a great character and I like how King has kept her story going after her partner (and the main protagonist of the first few books in the series) has left the scene.  Good stuff.  Kind of icky.
• Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie.  This is a collection of short stories set in the First Law (etc.) universe, telling back stories and side stories that didn't quite have a place in those books.  Lots of fun (and rather a lot of knives).
• Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.  An 1872 lesbianish vampire novella, this is a precursor to - and perhaps inspiration for - Bram Stoker's Dracula.  I loved it, although I thought the ending sort of fizzled out.  I was DELIGHTED to subsequently discover a 2015 Carmilla webseries on YouTube - recommend you read it first and then watch it.
• Home Before Morning - by Lynda Van Devanter.  This memoir, recalling the author's stint as an Army nurse in Vietnam, is basically a blueprint for the subsequent novel The Women that I read in March.  It leaves no question that war is hell, and so is the homecoming sometimes.
• All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Crosby.  Changing gears, this one - which I quite liked - is about a black sheriff in a small southern town, fighting racism and the tattered remains of the Confederacy, while also trying to hunt down a serial killer.
• The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward.  Stolen children, serial killers, recluses and charismatic cats are woven together in this one.  I was entralled all the way through and there are multiple twists as you go along.  So fun.
• What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher.  A retelling (huh, another one) of The Fall of the House of Usher, this time with more mushrooms.

March reads

I have inadvertantly stumbled into reading a bunch of Middle Eastern-ish fantasy books.  No idea why, but it happened.  Not mad about it.

• A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark.  A fantasy murder mystery set in steampunk 1912 Cairo, with a lesbian detective protagonist.  What's not to like?
• The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty.  More djinn, plus ifrits, magic and, yes, Cairo again.  This one is a little more dense but the heroine is flawed and feisty and I liked it enough to read the second one in the series too.
• Duma Key by Stephen King.  Ah, yes, a re-read.  I knew I'd read this one already tho - just wanted to read it again.
• The Queen by Nick Cutter.  Teenaged girl insect horror.  Pretty gross, kinda meh.
• I'll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong.  Supernatural horror with haunted houses and lingering spirits.  This one I liked quite well.
• What-the-Dickens by Gregory Maguire.  A fairy tale - tooth fairy, to be precise - for the younger set by the author of Wicked etc.  Didn't love it.  Didn't really see the point of the framework story.
• A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny.  I am now caught up on all the Inspector Gamache novels and have to wait for her to write the next one.  Great cop/murder mystery series set in a remote Quebec village.
• Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout.  I don't really remember the first, Pulitizer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge but this one rejoins Olive as an elderly woman.  It doesn't really have plot per se, just different vignettes in each chapter (which is not my preferred style - I like lots and lots of plot).  But it draws you in.
• The Mothers by Brit Bennett.  Contemporary novel set in a black community in southern California following three young people as they navigate family, high school, church and young adulthood.
• The Women by Kristin Hannah.  Set during the Vietnam War, this one follows Frances, a young nurse who volunteers to serve in country in the U.S. Army.  Initially way, way over her head, she finds loyal friends throughout the war and back home, dealing with the aftermath.  I liked this one and found it poignant, especially when the returned veteran nurses tried to get help only to be told time and time again, "there were no women in Vietnam."
• Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea.  Inspired by the author's mother's own experience, this novel follows posh Irene who, escaping an abusive fiance, volunteers with the Red Cross as a "donut dolly" in the European theater of WWII.  Irene and her BFF Dorothy are hot tickets and I realy liked this one too.
• The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty.  Second volume in the Daevabad trilogy.

February reads

 Hahahaha best intentions and all that: the second book I read in February was an accidental re-read but all the rest of them were new-to-me:

• Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth - I don't remember much about this one now but I liked it well-enough.
• The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher - I liked it the first time I read it (whenever that was) and I liked it this time too.  Scary portals to other worlds and rampaging taxidermy.
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman - You know how if there's a book and a movie, it's usually the book that is better?  The movie is better, for me anyway.  It may have been the edition I read.  And the movie is so well-cast, so iconic, that it kept getting in the way of what I was reading.
• Loot by Tania James - Historical fiction set in India and England.  Didn't love it, found it a little tedious.
• Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett.  Pretty good, seemed a little lightweight.
• How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelman.  Really liked this one: a retelling of classic fairytales via a support group for traumatized women.
• Into the Mist by PC Cast.  Post-apocalyptic, women-focused, mystical.  Characters seemed a little thinly drawn.
• Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.  Power, privilege and dark magics on the Yale University campus.  Really liked this one, as well as the second one in the not-yet-complete trilogy.
• Hellbent by Leigh Bardugo.  Continuing the story from Ninth House.
• The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli Clark.  This one is a novella and seemed lighweight.  Didn't love it but it was okay.

Hooray for libraries!

January reads

 It's 2025 and the country is on fire, literally and figuratively; my dog has now decided to be afraid of the fridge; and it has been cold and dark but without the snow our mountains desperately need.  So what's to do?  Slightly resurrect this little blog to report on the books I've read each month.  I just got a new library card - my second: one for the SLC library system I've had for years and the new one for the county system - in an attempt to support local.  I've always liked libraries as I read so quickly as to bankrupt myself were I to purchase all the books I read.  And I've always got at least one book going at any given time, re-reading old favorites if I'm in between library visits. 

That's what prompted this second library card, when I realized I'd re-read three books in one month (as outlined below), despite the lengthy to-be-read list I have.  So here's January's list and I'm planning for February's to have no re-reads:

• Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie - the final volume in the First Law trilogy.  I love Joe Abercrombie's stuff (re-read)
• Off Course by Erin Beresini - I stole this one from Mr. Mouse's library haul.  It's about obstacle course racing (non-fiction omg)
• Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman - Horror fiction looking closely at hauntings and addiction
• The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller - Gothic resurrection horror and ooh I liked this one a lot
• The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean - Kind of weird, literally about people who eat books, like vampires but words and paper instead of blood
• Mary: An Awakening of Terror by Nat Cassidy - menopause horror!  I liked this one a lot too
• Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie - The first of three standalone books in between his two trilogies, set in the same universe, using some of the same characters.  Swords and sandals and bloody, bloody treachery (re-read)
• The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie - The second of three standalone books in between his two trilogies, set in the same universe, using some of the same characters.  Swords and sandals battle fantasy, frigging amazing (re-read)

What are you reading?  What's on your to-be-read list?