novella

Review: A House at the Bottom of the Lake by Josh Malerman

~ megs14malloy

A House at the Bottom of a LakeA House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

**3.5-stars**

During the summer they are seventeen, James and Amelia, go on their first date. They are both nervous, but decide to take a risk.

They take a canoe out on a local lake, with some sandwiches and beer; making a day of it. James has spent some time on the busy lake and knows a passageway to a connecting lake that sees less traffic; they can be alone.

It’s romantic, it’s adventurous and the two really hit if off.

As they are exploring the second lake they come across another waterway; a tunnel actually, that the canoe will fit into. They’re having so much fun, and not wanting to disappoint one another, they figure why not explore more.

Things get a little hairy for a bit, but ultimately they pop out in a third lake. It seems completely unoccupied. They paddle around marveling at their find and then they discover more.

Looking down into the water they spy the top of a house. A house actually submerged under the surface of the lake.

They take turns diving down and cannot believe what they find. A two-story house with an open door and multiple furnished rooms to explore.

It defies all logic. How can this be? The two are absolutely mesmerized by their discovery.

After that first date they begin to spend more and more time at the house. It has altered their lives, but not all is well in their home below the waves.

This is an interesting novella. I have mixed feelings about it. Part of me loves the speculative side of it, that allows the Reader to imagine the outcome and essential meaning. But another equal sized part of me wants more explanation.

Even James and Amelia are confused by it all. How the heck am I supposed to know what is going on?

I did find the writing intriguing. I liked James and Amelia taking a chance on one another and finding and sharing this obsession together. I think they both felt like there was nothing special about themselves and finding this house, and each other, made them special. It gave them meaning.

To me, the house was ominous. It felt like a predator fish that lurks in the deepest parts of the ocean. The one that has a light on its head to attract all the little innocent fishes. By the time they realize they are in danger, it’s too late.

You know the one, right?

Overall, A House at the Bottom of a Lake is a very interesting story. I think I got a good handle on Malerman’s style from reading this. I’m definitely interested in picking up more of his work. Personally, I would love to see a continuation of this story.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Del Rey, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review. I appreciate you!

View all my reviews

Review: Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke

~ megs14malloy

Sour CandySour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved reading this book, which feels weird to say because of the content.

It is horrifying, grisly, stomach-churning, haunting, and I loved every minute of it.

I mean, what can I say, it’s what I like.

Sour Candy was my Halloween night read. I lit a pumpkin scented candle, grabbed an adult beverage, snuggled into my bed and read it from start to finish.

Coming in under 100-pages, this novella packs a lot in.

Phil Pendleton has his head in the clouds, straight off a hot night with his lady, as he enters his local Wal-Mart looking to buy them chocolates.

As he stands in the candy aisle making his choices, he hears a blood-curdling scream.

Glancing over he notices an ill-behaved child, pitching a fit, as often occurs in Wal-Mart, and a bedraggled mother who looks to be at the end of her rope.

When a manager intervenes, the situation, if anything, escalates.

Phil tries to assist, but as we all know, no good deed goes unpunished. That’s the last moment of normalcy Phil will have.

Certain aspects of that moment, and the debilitating health effects that followed, reminded me a bit of Thinner. I love Thinner, so comparing these is absolutely a compliment from me.

I also loved how Burke built the intensity in this. The story gets more strange as it goes along, and with that, the horrific nature builds and builds.

Playing off the classic creepy kid trope, this story took that to the next level. I was horrified for Phil.

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys a quick and memorable horror story!

You know who you are.

View all my reviews

Review: Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

~ megs14malloy

Night of the MannequinsNight of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Delightfully brutal and mentally horrific.

Jumping into this Stephen Graham Jones novella, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

To be honest, I never even read the synopsis. I see his name and immediately pick books up. It’s a compulsion.

Night of the Mannequins follows Sawyer and his group of childhood friends when a prank goes horribly wrong.

Disguising a discarded mall mannequin as a patron at the local movie theater seemed like the perfect way to get back at the stuffy assistant manager, who happened to recently punish the friend group for sneaking into a movie unpaid.

What starts off as a fairly innocent prank, however, turns more deadly than this group of teens could have ever imagined and it seems Sawyer is the only one with a plan to limit the destruction.

First, let me just swoon for a bit over how much I love SGJ’s writing. I promise not to let it go on for too long.

The style is edgy AF, yet feels like classic horror all the same. I love the humor and witty dialogue that he is able to bring to such dark tales.

Also, his books always go there, all the way to the deepest, darkest crevices of the human mind. It’s weird. It’s powerful. It’s freaking disturbing.

With this being said, I was really into this novella, loving everything about it until about the 70% mark.

Then I started feeling lost. While I understand the ending, some of the choices of events leading up to the ending didn’t seem to fit. It made the ending seem a little abrupt and disjointed for me.

Overall though, this novella is fantastic. You cannot deny the level of creativity it takes to write a story like this.

One that leads you in one direction, flips that on its head and then smacks you in the face with a healthy dose of depressing reality.

Sawyer is a very special protagonist. One whose inner thoughts will stick with me for a while.

I would highly recommend this to any horror fan or any person who just enjoys a bizarre tale.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review.

I was really looking forward to more SGJ and this did NOT disappoint!

View all my reviews

Review: In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children #4) by Seanan McGuire

~ megs14malloy

In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children, #4)In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**3.5-stars rounded up**

Not going to lie, this sort of crushed my heart.

I found this story to be so sad, y’all. It truly hit me right in the heart.

The idea of childhood innocence and optimism being dashed on the rocks of reality.

You cannot outsmart the market; you cannot have it all.

In an Absent Dream, a prequel novella, tells the backstory of Katherine Lundy, Eleanor West’s Assistant.

Her world was a goblin market with the door first manifesting to her in a large, mysterious tree which appears in a place it had never been before.

Talk about every child’s dream!

A portal world accessed through a tree that probably only you could see.

The description of the goblin market itself, not just the vibrant atmosphere, but also the system’s function, was fascinating. I think a lot can be taken from that as a social commentary on our own economic system.

That’s one of the things I love about McGuire’s writing, the stories hold so many different layers depending on how far you want to look.

There’s something for every reader within the pages.

I thought this was a super solid addition to this series. I enjoyed the relationships and how Lundy got to travel back and forth between the two places.

I’m looking forward to continuing on my Wayward Children journey. I wish this series would keep going on forever and ever!

View all my reviews

Review: Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3) by Seanan McGuire

~ megs14malloy

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3)Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beneath the Sugar Sky, the third installment of the beloved Wayward Children series, returns the reader to Eleanor West’s School.

At the beginning of our story, a girl, Rini, falls from the sky into the little pond behind the school. Students observing her arrival are shocked, but what she has to tell them shocks them even more.

Rini comes from the land of Confection and she is searching for her mother, Sumi.

But how is that possible? Sumi died years before, at the school, before she ever had the chance to conceive a child.

Nevertheless, Rini persists. She is clearly real, she is right there in front of them, although she is slowly starting to disappear. With her life on the line, Rini won’t let reality and logic stand in the way of her finding her mom and saving not just herself, but also her world.

Sumi was one of my favorite characters from Every Heart a Doorway, so I was excited to get to this book, as I knew there was a connection to her.

In spite of Eleanor’s rule for no quests, a quest is very much where this book goes. Cora, Christopher, Nadya and another one of my absolute favorites, Kade, assist Rini in her search.

A bone flute is used in this story, which I thought was so cool. Christopher, whose world was a skeleton underworld, was able to use the bone flute to summon skeletons right out of their graves and I was living for it!

The kids meet up with another of the original characters from Every Heart, so that was a lovely surprise as well.

The land of Confection, the world Sumi and thus, her daughter is from, is a nonsense world with some logic; some rules the nonsense must follow.

I’ll be honest, the whole concept of a nonsense world freaks me the heck out and Confection is no exception.

Even as a kid, I was super weirded out by Alice in Wonderland, which I would also classify as a nonsense world with some logic.

Overall, this is a delightful novella. Unsurprisingly, the characters were fantastic, the writing is top shelf beautiful; I just really, really enjoyed it.

I cannot wait to continue on with the next book in the series! Do you think Seanan McGuire could just keep adding to this series forever?

View all my reviews

Review: The Moor by Sam Haysom

~ megs14malloy

The MoorThe Moor by Sam Haysom
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

**3.5-stars**

This creepy, campy tale incorporates many things I love: chilling stories around a campfire, multiple POVs, the use of mixed media sources and a delightful, ‘is it supernatural, is it not supernatural’ feel.

Once I started, I couldn’t put it down and ended up completing it in under 24-hours.

I was drawn in right away, thanks to the lore of the Moors, and the clever use of newspaper articles of missing persons and bodies found in the area.

Haysom has definitely created a compulsively readable story here. However, as intrigued as I was, it still felt very surface level.

I wanted MORE…

All puns aside, it felt like an abridged version of what the story should have been.

With this being said, I know not everyone enjoys 500-page tomes as much as I do, so for a lot of people this book will tickle that horror spot just as they want it to. If you like creepy, outdoorsy stories you should check this one out.

This did remind me a lot of Nick Cutter’s, The Troop, mixed with a creature feature of the 1980s.

In case it’s not clear, those are both great things!

Overall, I think this is a good horror novella. I see a lot of potential in his writing and would definitely pick up more works by Sam Haysom!

Thank you so much to the publisher, Unbound Digital, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I appreciate it very much.

View all my reviews

Review: All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells

~ megs14malloy

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A hearty thumbs up to my new relationship with Martha Wells!

This novella was such a delightful surprise. Bringing all the humor I love in my scifi, I definitely plan to continue on with the rest of The Murderbot Diaries.

In All Systems Red we meet our protagonist, who calls itself Murderbot, a sentient Security unit, as it accompanies a group of scientists on an exploratory mission of a uninhabited planet.

When they discover another group of explorers are on the planet but are unable to reach them on comm channels, they go to investigate.

Spurred on by corruption, hijinks and battles ensue, with Murderbot and the crew trying to flee unharmed.

I loved that this was told from the perspective of Murderbot. It was great to follow its thought processes at it navigated its complicated relationships with the humans.

I am so ready to continue on with Murderbot’s story in the next book, where I believe we learn more about its backstory.

Super compelling, highly readable and a must for any scifi fan!

View all my reviews