Mini Reviews : Volume 21

     I definitely didn’t shake the spooky feeling after October. I was on a roll, even after Anna Dressed in Blood.

    So I picked up Slade House by David Mitchell, and oh man talk about spooky. It’s an shoot of his most recent hefty work of Bone Clocks which is waaaay up on the top of my TBR and buy list. But Slade House talks about (in the most basic of terms) a house in which once you see it and go in, you don’t come out. It got me and totally sunk me. I fell for every damn little trap and trick of the house and its occupants. Totally bought them so it was twisty and turny for me and really I’m just dying to get back to that world and learn more about what was happening. This is a big recommendation from me, even if you haven’t read Bone Clocks.

    My Kindle Cloud read while at work at this time was Dissension by Stacey Berg. I think this was recommended on Twitter as being a F/F urban dystopian fantasy novel. I am always down for that so I gave it a shot. I wound up enjoying it! It was a lot more intense on the world
and the story itself, the romance I thought was one of the least important parts of the story but it was a part. I’m not too wild about dystopias much anymore, but this construction of the world was fantastic with a powerful female caste of warriors and a weirdly science fiction but religious based society. Also, the feels definitely happened at the end of this. I had feelings, and now I’m stalking for news about the second book.

     Thanks to the feelings of Dissension I had to pick up something spooky again (who’s surprised?!). Six Scary Stories edited by Stephen King came in finally so I dove straight into that. These were super, super quick but enjoyable enough. Some of these stories, in particular the one about the toys, and the story that matches the cover story. Those were stand out. In fact… the more I think about it the more I can remember. There was also an excellent story about a man looking out over a cliff… with a dead body in his car. Over all, it was fun! I also really appreciated the idea behind it. They were all submitted for a contest at Hodder when his latest short story collection was released. One winner was supposed to be published but he instead picked six and they got bundled together! Very cool.

    The final book I read for this volume of Mini Reviews was Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson. I’ve read Woodson before, I think I may have touched on it previously but much of what I’m going to say now is the same as then. She’s expressive and beautiful and I can believe her writing. Her stories have this weight of sadness to them, but with maybe a touch of hope? Maybe that’s me, loving and wanting more for the characters in these novels, but I feel like there is hope there. I never really thought I’d be one for reading contemporary fiction like this but it was amazing – a big old recommendation from me.

     That’s it for this volume – I’ll hopefully be back to doing these weekly, so I’ll see you guys next week!