Review: Mists & Megaliths by Catherine McCarthy

 Mists and Megaliths, the newest short story collection by Catherine McCarthy, is steeped in Welsh folklore and could only be told by a storyteller such as McCarthy. The love and reverence McCarthy has for her homeland and its folklore are apparent throughout the book. Some stories contained in this collection include, but aren’t limited to:

 

Cragen- a young girl’s imaginary friend will do whatever it takes to keep her to itself.

Two’s A Company, Three’s A Shroud- when burial accommodations become tight in your village, you never know who your new neighbor might be.

Jagged Edges- an old railway guard reminisces about the rail lines that he worked his entire life and the disuse and ruin that they have become.

MARA- a couple’s life is turned upside down by the spirit box they bring home from holiday.

 

I loved this collection. While the stories fit in the horror genre, I would say that they are firmly more of the quiet horror variety. Even so, McCarthy has given us a wide variety to read: Eco-horror, cosmic horror, dark comedy, and even heartfelt as you will find in the story “Coblynau,” which was my favorite of the entire book.

Take the time to read the short notes included before each story, they really enhanced the reading for me.

 

5/5 Stars

 

Many thanks to Catherine McCarthy for providing me an eARC of this book to read and review. All thoughts and opinions of this work are my own.

Review: Strange Nests by Jessica McHugh

 Strange Nests, the follow-up offering by Bram Stoker nominated author Jessica McHugh, is a new blackout poetry collection based on the book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Barnett. The book uses selections from The Secret Garden to create a beautiful meditation on love, loss, pain, memory, and the grieving process. This project came to McHugh shortly after the loss of her brother, which I’m sure is the inspiration for Strange Nests. The results are both heartbreaking and beautiful in equal measure.

This is my first experience reading any of McHugh’s work and my first experience reading blackout poetry. While it takes a bit of getting used to, I really enjoyed the book once my eyes got adjusted to piecing together the words and phrases. I plan to buy physical copies of both Strange Nests and A Complex Accident of Life, in which McHugh used the text of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as inspiration and medium.

I loved reading this book. The artwork by Lynne Hansen fits the theme and feel of the book perfectly. I am already looking forward to reading this again when I get my physical copy.

 

 

5/5 Stars

Many thanks to Beverly Bambury Publicity for proving me with an eArc of this book to read and review. All thoughts and opinions on this work are my own.

Review: Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

TW/CW: Animal abuse, animal death, child murder, grooming,

 

I finished reading this story on June 2^nd, and have sat here for the past 2 months and wondered repeatedly to myself, “Wtf did I just read?” In Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Eric LaRocca has written a story unlike any I have ever read before, and probably will never read again. Just kidding, I’m totally reading this again.

In just 102 pages containing a few emails and instant messenger conversations, LaRocca built a story that started out as one human being helping another human being who was going through a rough time and quickly turned into a person giving up their freedom, autonomy, and safety to a stranger. Voluntarily at that! The dynamic between Agnes and Zoe ramps up to pure madness. We know from the very beginning how Agnes’s story will turn out, but getting to the how and why is brutal and harrowing.

I read Eric’s first novella, Starving Ghosts in Every Thread, and would have begged to review this book if I had to. LaRocca’s prose while exquisite, has a way of chilling me and digging down into my brain and camping out. While I thought the first book was also beautiful and unsettling, I clearly had no clue what was to come next.

 

Highly, highly, highly recommended

5/5 Stars

 

Thanks to the author and his publisher Weird Punk Books for providing me with a eARC of this novella to read and review. I have also purchased a copy of this novel at my own costs from Amazon. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Review: Come With Me by Ronald Malfi

 Aaron Decker didn’t know when his wife Allison left their home on a cold December morning that it would be the last time he saw her alive. Her last request to Aaron, “Come with me,” still ringing in his ears hours later when he is identifying her body in the morgue. Living with the guilt of not accompanying Allison on her fateful shopping trip, as well as for the distance the couple had been experiencing in their marriage as of late, Aaron can only function if “Other Aaron” takes over and pilots him through his life--work, eating, accepting condolences, and activities of daily life that are too daunting for Aaron. But even “Other Aaron” can’t help Aaron when the memories--and ghost-- of Allison begins haunting him.

When he begins to go through Allison’s belongings, he finds a mysterious receipt for a seedy motel paid for in cash--a trip she took without him. Thinking the worst, he frantically searches their home, only to find a gun and a folder full of dead girls from all over the country. What was Allison hiding from him?

I really don’t want to give anything away or spoil the story, but this book was just….wow. Come With Me is one of my top books of 2021, no contest. First off, Malfi’s choice to tell this story as if Aaron were in conversation with Allison was brilliant. It instantly immersed me in the story. Aaron is a likable and sympathetic protagonist, you feel his pain and confusion throughout the book as he sets out to finish Allison’s unfinished business. Second, this book will make you question relationships both familial and romantic and leave you thinking, “How well do we ever know our loved ones?”

This book was creepy, heartbreaking, and will have you hooked from page one. Please make sure you read the author’s note after the story is finished, it is a beautiful testament to the friendship of the author and the inspiration for the book.

5/5 Stars

Thank you to #NetGalley and #TitanBooks for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review: Easy As Pie by Tiffany Michelle Brown

Death is one of the few universal certainties of life. It comes for us all, one way or another. For James Bentley, Death came to visit wearing the face of his late wife and bearing her famous peach pie. Not ready to take his final journey, James makes a deal with Death: spend 3 days with me wearing his wife’s face.

Easy As Pie is a bittersweet story, about being afraid to face death, even if it wears the visage of the one you love most. I am not ashamed to admit that it brought me to tears, thinking of older family members whose own time is growing shorter. I can only hope that when the end comes, it comes with great love.

 5/5 Stars

Review: Latinx Screams edited by V. Castro and Cina Pelayo

Latinx Screams is a collection of stories from diverse up-and-coming Latinx horror talent, compiled and edited by the talented duo of V. Castro and Cynthia Pelayo under the Burial Day Press banner. Each of the twelve stories feels fresh and unique; there is no one theme set for the collection, but something for every taste: witchcraft, body horror, demons, curses, cosmic horror, sci-fi horror, Krampus and more.  We are getting stories from different areas and backgrounds, possibly some variations on regional folklore, but fully owned by their storytellers. Stories in this collection include:

Sangre Derramada by Hector Acosta-Workplace ethics meets bloody body horror when illegal immigrants are working in deplorable conditions in a chicken processing plant and a health inspector shows up to investigate a severed finger found in a package of chicken.

Black Sheep by Sarah Davis- A biracial reporter seeks a vigilante in her crime-filled city.

Morning of the Teeth by Rios De La Luz- Exorcism, witchcraft and forest spirits

Frijoles by Laura Diaz De Arce- Generational curse that plague the descendants of a Cuban soldier

Come, Play by Sergio Gomez- friends sneak out of their houses to catch frogs, get more than they bargained for.

The Organometallic God by Arasibo Campeche: body and disease horror when science meets the practice of Santeria

Galán by Richie Narvaez-Sci-fi horror when a family’s robotic domestic helper becomes fixated on the family’s matriarch.

The Devil with Me by Baillie Puckett-Demonic possession story

The Throats of Neptune by Monique Quintana-mermaid horror where the imprisoned mermaids seek freedom

Behind the Mountain by E. Reyes- Hands down, my favorite story in the collection. It felt very much like a Latinx variation on Pet Semetery where instead of resurrecting your pet, you bury your loved ones.

Imperial Slaughterhouse by A. E. Santana- Very atmospheric, felt like I was in the desert heat as the protagonist searches and tells the story of a haunted slaughterhouse and makes a deal with demons.

Pancho Claus v. Krampus by V. Castro- Pancho Claus’s first day of retirement doesn’t go as planned when he runs into Krampus on vacation in Iceland.

I have had the pleasure of reading stories written by V. Castro and Laura Diaz De Arce in other publications. I look forward to reading work by the other writers and hope that there are more anthologies like this in the future.

 

5/5 Stars

Thank you to the editors for providing me with an e-ARC to read and review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review: Couple Found Slain by Mikita Brottman

 TW/CW: Parricide, Mental Illness, Medical Abuse, Imprisonment

I am huge fan of true crime-tv shows, books, documentaries; you name it and I’ve probably watched it or read about it. So, when I was looking for an audiobook to review on NetGalley and saw that a true crime audiobook was available, I jumped all over it. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that Couple Found Slain wasn’t your average true crime book.

Couple Found Slain by author Mikita Brottman chronicles the story of Brian Bechtold, a patient at the Clifford T. Perkins Center, a forensic psychiatric facility. Right off the bat, this story is different because it begins with 22-year-old Brian Bechtold entering a Florida police station and telling the police there that he murdered both of his parents. Found incompetent to stand trial, Brian is sentenced to a psychiatric facility with no determined date of release.

This story is more than the story of a man who killed his parents brutally. It is the story of how the mentally ill can be sent to facilities such as Perkins without a clear treatment plan and no plan for rehabilitation. And as you will read in the book, often they cannot even keep the patients safe from each other.

Brian was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic but later feels that he is cured and should be on the path to be released back into society. Doctors and other medical professionals feel that he is hiding his symptoms and needs to be on psychiatric medication. The medication makes him feel worse. The notes the doctors make on Brian get passed from doctor-to-doctor treating Brian over the years, each adding their own differentiating diagnoses. It becomes difficult to tell what the doctors are seeing in Brian and what they are being told by other professionals and accepting as truth.

This story is well researched and presented well, beginning with Brian’s family history of abuse, the murders of his parents, and moving on to his incarceration in Perkins, and how the desperation to be treated fairly and justly leads to desperation and reckless choices. The writer’s empathy for Brian is evident, but it doesn’t affect their ability to tell his story objectively.

Brian Bechtold entered Clifford T. Perkins in 1992 and remains there until this very day.

4/5 Stars

Thank you to #NetGalley and #MacMillanAudio for providing me with an audiobook version of this book for my review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review: Tortured Innocence by Shantel Brunton

 TW/CW: Rape, Mental and Physical Abuse, Torture, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Animal Death, Graphic Violence, Suicide, Cult Behavior

 

Nicole’s entire world is shattered when her mother is brutally murdered in front of her at the age of six. To help her heal from her trauma, her father moves her to a remote mountain area where there are few other people living. She seems to be living a normal teenage life, when she suddenly begins receiving letters from an unknown source, hearing voices in her head, and experiencing horrific nightmares. When the nightmares bleed over into her daily life, Nicole is pulled into a world of pain and torture unlike she could ever imagine.

Nicole’s life becomes a wild rollercoaster in this alternate world of pain and torture, enduring unbelievable suffering, all to live through it again and again. She meets those who seek to imprison her and make her their slave, those who want to free her, and finally come to find those who ultimately become her family.

First up, I LOVE that the author included a page of trigger and content warnings right up front, because I definitely needed them. This book is exquisitely written, but it is a rough read in terms of violence, torture, and abuse. I had to sit with the book a day or so after finishing it to gather my thoughts and describe it succinctly. The book is a wild ride, you feel like you are trapped with Nicole in her nightmares and torture and are just as helpless as she is in the story.

 

4/5 Stars

Thanks to the author who provided me with a review copy of this novel for me to read and review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.