In Nightfall by Suzanne Young

Published: 3/28/23Publisher: Delacorte PressAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

Theo and her brother, Marco, threw the biggest party of the year. And got caught. Their punishment? Leave Arizona to spend the summer with their grandmother in the rainy beachside town of Nightfall, Oregon--population 846 souls.The small town is cute, when it's not raining, but their grandmother is superstitious and strangely antisocial. Upon their arrival she lays out the one house rule: always be home before dark. But Theo and Marco are determined to make the most of their summer, and on their first day they meet the enigmatic Minnow and her friends. Beautiful and charismatic, the girls have a magnetic pull that Theo and her brother can't resist.But Minnow and her friends are far from what they appear.And that one rule? Theo quickly realizes she should have listened to her grandmother. Because after dark, something emerges in Nightfall. And it doesn't plan to let her leave. (goodreads.com)

I had to give myself a little time before reviewing IN NIGHTFALL. I was so far into my feels with it I needed a passport to get back. I am all for Lost Boys-inspired books. It's pretty much a guarantee that I will pick it up. It's how I found the Blood Coven series by Mari Mancusi (after a referral from a friend) and MAYHEM by Estelle Laure. GIVE. IT. TO. ME. So when I saw that IN NIGHTFALL was Lost Boys-inspired, I went YES.Until I read the blurb.Why did the blurb take be aback? Because it's basically the plot of The Lost Boys. Down to moving from Phoenix to a small beach town in California, I mean Oregon. Commence rage.No, Donna! Don't! Don't judge it until you can read it! That might not be the case!So I read the first chapter preview.There was more rage.Why? Because it's the opening credits scene of The Lost Boys. Nearly to a T.THINGS AREN'T LOOKING GOOD.I'd requested the book as soon as I heard about it back in July or August. I just got the approval for it in March and I immediately started reading because I had to know.I HAD TO.And????I'll start with what I liked about it:Divorced from its source material, it's exactly the sort of YA horror I've been looking for in the current market. Not too deep, kind of kitschy, fun, spooky, underlying creepy. An all around good time. Doesn't require too much thought and gives me exactly what I was looking for. In that aspect, it nailed The Lost Boys right on the head.Unfortunately, it nailed everything else about The Lost Boys right on the script.IN NIGHTFALL isn't an homage to The Lost Boys. It's not inspired by. It IS. Young did not deviate from the plot of the movie at all. So readers, if you're familiar with The Lost Boys, you will know the entire plot of this book before even picking it up. You will know which character is which, what happens to who, every twist and turn, and how it ends. You already know how this book pans out. There aren't Lost Boys easter eggs in here. It's the whole damn rabbit. Characters, actions, scenes, character motivations, the blood-sucking Brady Bunch. It's all there.What's different about it? It takes place in Oregon and the vampires are chicks. That's about it.It's The Lost Boys without the personality of The Lost Boys. Gone is Joel Schumacher's sexiness, the dark undercurrent of the story wrapped in a pseudo-happy-go-lucky veneer, and the flash genius in the frying pan of the 80s to do something wholly unique. IN NIGHTFALL ends up being a pale, bland knock off that's disappointingly straight. Where Schumacher's movie was throbbing with queer subtext, Young's book gives mid-teens YA vibes in its heteronormativity. Of course, I can't forget the Frog brothers, I mean the gay podcasters that are the token gay comedic relief that exist to serve the main character. I've literally read better, more inventive TLB fanfic (and I've read A LOT of TLB fanfic). This book screams self insert Emerson sister fic.I was so, so hopeful that Young was going to do something different with it. Killer mermaids or sirens or selkies or something. Do something to make it actually her own story. Those were the vibes I was getting for the first, like, third of the book. NOPE. It's The Lost Boys, slightly tweaked.Who is this book supposed to be for? Because when the blurb is using comps like The Lost Boys and Buffy, are today's teens going to know what any of that is? Probably not, unless they have parents with taste. Those comps are for people my age, because this YA book isn't really being sold to teens, now is it? Says the teen librarians themselves, books like this are being written for the adults who buy them, not the teens who read them. The thing is, IN NIGHTFALL is actually a great book to fit in that space. The MC doesn't even have her license yet. This is actually a fantastic YA book FOR TEENS. But the marketing is targeting the nostalgia of the people with the bank accounts. I'm sure teen readers, especially younger teen readers, would love this book, but it has nothing to do with The Lost Boys or Buffy.It's just getting old that publishers are getting so risk averse with what they put out that they just keep regurgitating the same thing because it's safe. Young, with her impressive backlist, is as safe and as sure of a bet as one can get in publishing, which is why we're here. Her writing is fine. It's nothing to write home about, but she can string a sentence together. It gets the job done and moved me from one end of the book to the other. But this safety also guarantees that instead of a unique take on The Lost Boys, something that is genuinely a hat tip to the movie but stands on its own and speaks to a newer author's imagination and verve, we get barely conceived fanfiction that doesn't do anything with the source material except follow the movie's plot. I'll just watch the movie, thanks.PS: Where the hell does Buffy come into this? The fancy dress and vampire-staking at the end? Bit of a stretch.1.5I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah

Published: February 21, 2023Publisher: Wednesday BooksAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

The town of Bishop is known for exactly two things: recurring windstorms and an endless field of sunflowers that stretches farther than the eye can see. And women—missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. The case is closed and their daughters are left in their dusty shared house with the shattered pieces of their lives. Until the wind kicks up a terrible secret at their mothers’ much-delayed memorial.With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. After caring for the other girls, Delilah would like to move on with her boyfriend, Bennett, but she can’t bear his touch. Whitney has already lost both her mother and her girlfriend, Eleanor, and now her only solace is an old weathervane that seems to whisper to her. Jude, Whitney's twin sister, would rather ignore it all, but the wind kicks up her secret too: the summer fling she had with Delilah's boyfriend. And more than anything, Bo wants answers and she wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was. She’s sure of it.Bishop has always been a strange town. But what the girls don’t know is that Bishop was founded on blood—and now it craves theirs. (goodreads.com)

There are going to be spoilers in this review. I don't think I can talk about the issues I had with it without spoiling. So if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is Children of the Corn but with grown ass men instead of kids and sunflowers instead of corn. It certainly has the threads of being creepy but the motives, the underlying theme, and the character development all make this story fizzle out to little more than a disappointing deflated balloon.The underlying theme of Handmaid's Tale-esque subjugation of women (in this case without the forced birth and with ritualistic slaughter) is just a tired trope at this point, made all the more tired because we're still dealing with this nonsense today. So if the author isn't doing something particularly inventive with it, it's just old and boring and I absolutely found myself thinking "oh, this again?" when I was reading. From the intro I hoped it wasn't going to just be women and that the dude's wife was just convenient, but nope. It's women in perpetuity. So that's cool.When we discover that the girls' mothers are still alive, I was hoping for them to be incapacitated somewhere, but nope. They're all living together in a house, just sitting around and gardening, waiting for the day their daughters come through the corn, I mean, sunflower stalks to safety on their own. And the reason they didn't do anything? The sunflowers wouldn't let them. I'm sorry, what? The thing was, there was no reason for them leaving their daughters behind. They just up and left and saved themselves and hoped nothing bad would come of their kids. I'M SORRY, WHAT? And the girls were like oh yeah, totally. That's fine. We're cool. No worries. It was so absurd and so beyond the realm of suspension of disbelief that I couldn't. Those women didn't tear the earth apart trying to find a way to get to their daughters? THOSE WOMEN JUST UP AND LEFT THEM, SAVED THEMSELVES, AND CROSSED THEIR FINGERS THAT THEIR DAUGHTERS WOULD BE OKAY IN A TOWN THAT SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERS WOMEN? And they didn't contribute to that same patriarchal system . . . how? Either they didn't want their kids and were really good at pretending, or they're just awful parents and probably shouldn't have had them to begin with.And then the climax of the story was just one giant deus ex machina. The only character who did anything to save anyone was Bo, and it wasn't even on page. Not that I need blood and gore and vicious revenge or anything. But to have that pivotal moment that actually did save the girls just be fade to black was mind boggling to me. The rest of it, the ghosts just randomly appeared after not being present aside from a faint whisper the entire story and led them out of town. WHY NOW? There was no answer for that other than because reasons. Because the book needed to end and there was no real way for them to get out except for those ghosts, I guess.The town itself is, as I'm lead to believe, inaccessible to people from the outside and people inside can't leave. So . . . everyone's inbred? How many people can possibly be in that town, let alone people who are capable of procreating something other than a Hapsburg? I wasn't under any impression that Bishop was anything other than a modern, albeit rural, town. If they're cut off, how are they stocking their shelves? How do they have cars? Cell phones? Computers? Televisions? How does any of this exist in this town? It didn't even have a paved road. And apparently no real medical anything. This doesn't make any sense.The characters themselves were largely interchangeable. Bo was the only one who really stood out because she had some anger issues. But only just. The four of them, plus the three mothers, didn't appear all that necessary as stand-alone characters. I had a hard time keeping track of who was who pretty much up until the end, again, aside from Bo. Same thing with the guys. Even now I don't remember which is Evan and which is Caleb. They were interchangeable in the story.I'm not sure what the selling point of this book is. I'm guessing the language it's written in, but it's not something that stands out. I didn't find it particularly flowery in a way that I would enjoy. I could see it was trying. But among the very poorly built world, the tired tropes, the lackluster motivations, and the bland characters, the most beautiful writing in the world wouldn't have saved it for me. WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS was just a total disappointment. So much potential and the execution was just undercooked and unseasoned, at best.It has nothing but five star reviews on NetGalley. That is very much not the case on Goodreads.  So either I'm about to ruin its curve on NetGalley, or the publisher is deleting anything less than glowing reviews of this book. 🧐1I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Neverest by TL Bodine

Pub date: April 25, 2023Publisher: Ghost Orchid PressAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

One year ago, Sean Miller—journalist and mountain climbing enthusiast—reached the summit of Mount Everest and was never seen again. Unable to move on without knowing the truth of what happened, his widow Carrie insists on an expedition to search for Sean’s body so it can be properly laid to rest. Tom, Sean's best friend and former climbing partner, agrees to serve as expedition guide and promises to keep Carrie safe on the mountain, despite their complicated relationship history.Guided by a travel journal left behind by her husband, Carrie ventures into the frozen, open-air graveyard of the world's tallest peak. But as Sean’s diary and Carrie’s experiences reveal, climbing the mountain is more than a test of endurance; it’s a battle of wills with an ancient and hostile force protecting the mountain—and the dead do not rest easy at the summit. (goodreads.com)

I'd read Bodine's work before she asked me to blurb NEVEREST, so I was interested in seeing what she'd come up with next in this interesting horror story set on Everest. It's something different and intriguing and it captured my attention immediately. And it certainly didn't disappoint.One thing I've noticed about Bodine's writing is her ability to dig up the humanest of human emotions in her characters. To the point where they're almost unlikeable for how raw they react to situations. Yet at the same time they're so incredibly human that you can't help but empathize with them while you're reading. Carrie is no different as we sit on her shoulder and climb the mountain with her. She works through a rollercoaster of emotions as she grapples with her husband's death, and the guilt of some of her feelings toward him in the final handful of time before he died. At times cringey, but realistic to the point of hurting, I couldn't look away.Plus, there's this underlying low thrum of horror that simmers under the surface of the story. Right from page one there's a sense of foreboding as Carrie's plane comes in for a rocky landing. NEVEREST is definitely not a sun-shiny story, that's for sure! It's a horror that lurks in the corner of the eye, in reiterated tales of urban legends that live on only on people's tongues. Or in Carrie's case, in the works of her husband through his journal.The ending doesn't really give you that well-rounded solution to the story, but it's a fitting ending and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. The horror is insidious that way, lurking just on the edges of the pages. It might peek it's finger in, but that's all you'll see of it. I love this kind of psychological horror that never gives you the satisfaction of a solid ending. That's the whole point, and it makes it all the creepier.NEVEREST was a ride of a story that had me flinching with every page turn because I kept expecting something to reveal, but she keeps the terror on simmer the whole time, allowing it to needle under your skin and fester. If you want a low-key yet mind-screwy king of horror, NEVEREST is the book for you!4.5

October DNFs

DIVISION X by Ryan August HillWhere did I stop? 11% inWhy? I really liked the premise of the story, but the writing style is absolutely not for me. All tell and no show with descriptions so detailed they read more like bullet pointed lists than anything prose-like, I was struggling by the time I stopped. I wanted to get to at least 25% and I couldn't even get there. Not only was it all tell and no show, it didn't even tell me about character emotions or feelings or thoughts. It was entirely focused on physically moving the characters from one scene to the next, and that's it. So I had zero connection to the characters, and while the story started with a serious bang, and I can absolutely appreciate that, it just was not anywhere near engaging enough for me to keep reading. I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

A House Unsettled by Trynne Delaney

Published: October 11, 2022Publisher: Annick PressAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

With her dad’s incarceration, escalating fights with her mom, and an overbearing stepdad she’s not sure she can trust, Asha is desperate for the fresh start promised by a move to the country. Her great aunt Aggie’s crumbling, pest-ridden house isn’t exactly what she had in mind, but the immediate connection she makes with her new neighbor Cole seems like a good sign. Soon, though, Asha’s optimism is shadowed by strange and disturbing occurrences within the old house’s walls: footsteps stalking the halls; a persistent chill; cold hands around her neck in the middle of the night . . .Fearing for her loved ones’ safety—and her own—Asha seeks out the source of these terrifying incidents and uncovers secrets from the past that connect her and Cole’s families and reach into the present. But as tensions with her mom and stepdad rise and Cole withdraws, Asha is left alone to try and break the cycle of violence that holds them all in its haunting grip. (goodreads.com)

I thought A HOUSE UNSETTLED was a good story that excellently put a lot of things into perspective. Asha's situation as a mixed race kid with only her white mom around, moving her back to her ancestral home that's ancestral in a rich white sort of way and a conscripted Black sort of way, is a situation I can't possibly understand. But I thought it was worked into the story beautifully. How the ghosts centered around this primary theme, plus added patriarchy and obligatory heterosexuality and binary gender conformity, all added depth to the story that made it something more than a ghost story.The focus was less on the haunting of the house and more on how history haunts a person, so I didn't find much of it particularly scary. But it definitely gave me WHITE SMOKE vibes from time to time. Where WHITE SMOKE was much more of a horror story supported by racial issues, A HOUSE UNSETTLED is more of a racial issues book supported by a horror story. The horror is secondary, but it works for the book.I thought Asha was a wonderful character and while I thought she was irrational at times, I got why. Not only because of basic teenager stuff, but Delaney did a great job of building the pressure on top of Asha in a slow but steady way. By the end of the book, she was on the verge of breaking and I honestly couldn't see how it all was going to pan out. But I think everything worked out the way it should have, if not in the happiest of ways.While not my favorite horror story, I can appreciate the breadth of storytelling here, and it really is a great, intricate story. Immensely impactful and at times chilling, I couldn't stop reading it.4I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.