Review: Lost Girls – An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

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★★★

Opening Mystery: Seriously, WTF happened to Shannan Gilbert?

Main Creep: Peter Hackett has some attention issues

Plot Truthy-ness: A humanizing portrait

I’m pretty fascinated by the Long Island Serial killer case. It’s been some time since we had an evil, undetectable serial killer case to watch in real-time. Though it’s faded from news and been replaced by, well, mostly Trump for fuck’s sake… this is certainly a story to keep a light on. There are dozens of women whose lives have been cut short with zero progress towards justice of any kind.

The more cynical side of me might say that because they were escorts and sex workers that their cases are deemed “less important” to solve compared to other things cops are coming across every day involving people with more “societal value.” That’s the more cynical side.

I’ve seen a couple documentaries on this decades-old unsolved mystery, watched a few interviews and have a general idea of who is suspicious AF (I’m looking at you Dr. Hackett, you shady motherfucker,) so, I wanted to read this novel by an award-winning investigative reporter because I thought I would be getting a really in-depth overview of the case as it stood in 2013, and some theories about what the actual fuck is going on.

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Review: I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney

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★★½

Opening Hook: Phone, keys, wallet

Main Character: JUST ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTIONS!

Plot Twisty-ness: 👉👌

What in the actual fuck?

Why did you do this to me, Feeney?!

Sometimes I Lie was one of my more favourite reads last year, so I was pretty pumped up to read the second offering from this author, but unfortunately, I’m W-T-F-ing all over the place with this one.

I mean, seriously. Why? Why that ending?

I should have fucking known I was going to be disappointed by this.

Clue number one: some of the most reliable thriller reviewers around these parts (Dennis from Scared Straight Reads, I’m looking at you,) gave this book one fucking star.

Clue number two: My buddy Lori (@mylifewithbooksandbeans on Insta if you’re looking for a gem bookstagrammer to follow,) asked for my address and paid the costs to send me her ARC copy from the US, just because she wanted me to write a review.

People don’t want me to write reviews about books they think I’ll love, okay? I might not know where Brazil is on a map, but I know that much.

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True Crime Tuesday: The Nine Million Dollar Murder

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It’s been a while!

Sorry for the break! But not really. I hope you stumbled across many other funny and wonderful book bloggers and true crime writers to fill the Krystin-shaped hole in your heart. I know there are so many writers to read, and it means a lot to me that you still stick around my blog even when I disappear every now and again.

I’ve been super fucking busy at home trying to finish my bedroom renovation. I know, I know. I’ve been promising forever to post my basement reno and I’ve already moved on to my bedroom. What can I say? I don’t possess a lot of virtues, and patience definitely isn’t one of the few.

I finished painting on Sunday and I’m so happy to say there are no more rooms in my house that require a full wall of paint… three years later. I fucked up my shoulder once again and my back is twisted, but all the heavy, big projects are officially done and now I can just focus on the smaller details like hanging a mirror or putting up curtains.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to just sit on my fucking ass and do nothing once again. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it looks a lot like me in bed with a book and a snuggly puppy. And of course, writing more posts around here. I fucking swear it!

Truly, my Fitbit has never seen me achieve so many steps before. It thinks someone new is wearing it.

Anyway, I’m feeling a little bit less stressed, my brain fog is clearing and my creative juices are totally pumping… forgive me for saying “creative juices.” That phrase could not be any more disgusting. But I digress… a new true crime story is just breaking within the last couple of days, and it is completely fucked up and sensational and has me rolling my eyes in all kinds of directions because goddamn teenagers are just so fucking stupid, cruel sometimes.

We’re talking terrible teenagers. We’re talking murder. We’re talking child pornography. We’re talking fake millionaires. We’re talking being gullible as fuck.

This is the murder of Cynthia Hoffman.

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Review: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

“Fear…is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”

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★★

Viking | 1959

Opening Spooky: THERE ARE TOO MANY DOORS

Main Character: Was crazy before she got there.

Plot Scary-ness: Underwhelming boos

The first time I ever came across this story was in 1999 when I was 14 years old and watched The Haunting for the first time.

Is it a good movie? Not really, but Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson in a murderous, haunted house? That’s always going to be a yes from me. And that scene where Owen Wilson gets his head lobbed off? Scared the shit out of me twenty years… TWENTY YEARS AGO?! Omg. *vomits in mouth*

So, there’s some nostalgia linked to this for me in terms of shitty 90s horror movies that I still have a fondness for.

I later saw the original 1963 adaptation which just didn’t really work for me because I was just a dumbass teenager with a myopic view of entertainment and a shitty attitude.

In 2001, Scary Movie 2 pulled heavily from The Haunting and it has been seared into my brain ever since.

In fact, while I was reading this I suddenly had a desire to watch Scary Movie 2, so I did, and that was arguably a bad idea because for the rest of the book all I could picture was Chris Elliot with his gross tiny fucking hand.

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Say what you want about quality, but the moronic movie is funny as hell.

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Review: The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.

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★★★½

St. Martin’s Press | 2018

Opening Hook: Wife turned ex turned stalker

Main Character: Like a baby deer learning how to walk, but after being gaslit by a psychopath

Plot Twisty-ness: More wavy, less twisty.

This book is the direction that The Last Mrs. Parrish should have gone instead of being the misogynistic piece of garbage it turned out to be. I don’t know why everyone likes that book so much, or why it’s being made into a movie, but I’m very disappointed in each and every one of you who back it as a good book. And I’m telling your fucking parents. Don’t @ me.

The Wife Between Us doesn’t fully realize it’s potential as a domestic thriller in a way that was satisfying to me. While the quite and calculating approach the authors seem to prefer worked really well in Hendrick’s and Pekkanen’s other novel An Anonymous Girl, here it made the narrative less thrilling and more soap opera-ish than I would have wanted.

Where The Last Mrs. Parrish tried to convince the reader that domestic abuse is okay as long as the “replacement wife” fucking sucks enough to “deserve” it, this book pumped the breaks before completely going in that direction. Instead, there is a moment of, “Oopsie! I guess it wasn’t very nice of me to make that woman take my place in my abusive relationship.”

You think?!

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Review: The Fact of a Body – A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

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★★

Flatiron Books | 2017

I really wanted to like this. I didn’t want to write a negative review for a book that is, in part, detailing the author’s personal experience with molestation.

The heavy subject matter makes a negative review seem tacky, to a degree. And I didn’t want to be that asshole. But, that’s not where this review is coming from. At all.

I applaud the author’s use of writing to work through her trauma and to find an understanding of how trauma shaped her. If this book was a tool for personal peace (which I suspect it was,) then really, any negative review means nothing in the grand scheme of that healing.

But, I am a reader and book reviewer and so I’ll be honest about my reading experience, as I always am, beyond the personal aspects Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich bravely shares.

The Fact of a Body weaves two true life events. One: the re-trial of Ricky Langley, a confessed pedophile who was sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder of his 6-year-old neighbour, Jeremy Guillory. In 2003, he was awarded a new trial. The intention of his attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, was to reduce Langley’s death sentence down to life in prison. Clive the Lawyer runs a law firm which specializes in Death Row cases and he is staunchly anti-capital punishment, taking on many cases where the intention is only ever to reduce the sentence, not to prove innocence.

The author begins an internship at Smith’s law firm at the same time the re-trial is starting. During her orientation, Alexandria is shown Langley’s ’92 confession where he talks about his sexual attraction to children and what he did to Jeremy Guillory.

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My Favorite Murder Mentioned My Blog and I’m Losing My Fucking Mind.

OKAY, Okay.

OKAY.

OMFG OKAY.

I need to take a breath and chill.

I feel like I have to pee even though I just peed. But I keep remembering what happened to me today and then I need to pee again.

Y’ALL.

KAREN FUCKING KILGARIFF READ. MY. BLOG.

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Opinion: Banning Abortion Doesn’t Stop Abortion

Ayoooo! It’s about to get a little political/feminist up in here, nerds! So if you prefer your book bloggers to be 100% book-talk all the time and to never express opinions beyond that, or if you’d rather not ruin our relationship on the chance that we have differing opinions on sensitive subject matter, then consider this your five second warning…

5, 4, 3, 2…

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m opinionated. Unapologetically so. Does that mean I never change my position? Of course not.

I like facts and logic and statistics, and using judgement, to reach a position of opinion or principal. And if new information comes along that can tweak that position, then I duly take that into consideration. I don’t come to conclusions based on emotions, but rather on what’s the most rational..

That said, I don’t respond well to people who have no logical reasoning to back up their opinions, and who instead choose to function from a place of emotion or, in some cases, religious belief.

“I don’t like LGBTQ people because the bible…!!”

SHUT. UP. You don’t like or condone, or give respect or just basic human decency, to a whole group of human beings because of… magic?

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True Crime Tuesday: Bobby Joe Long

We had a 3-day weekend in Canada to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. That badass bitch is long dead and I don’t even know how old she’d be at this point, but honestly, most people just use it as an excuse to drink and watch fireworks. It’s commonly referred to as “May 2-4,” (as in a case of beer) and I’m not complaining about an extra day off.

I’m not really a beer and fireworks kind of girl, so my time looks like any other day off, but with scrambling for groceries because everything is going to be closed thrown in to make things interesting. You’d think people were expecting the end of the world to come with how busy Costco gets the day before a stat holiday.

Another little bonus this weekend was that my husband and I had the house to ourselves for the first time in a long time. We capitalized on this by showering with the door open, walking around without pants on and ordering a bunch of food that we didn’t need to share with anyone else, except for the dog.

Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey (2018)

On Sunday afternoon, after I’d finished my book and changed out of my leggings into a new pair of leggings, I turned on Lifetime and indulged in made-for-TV-movie goodness. I happened to find one titled, Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey.

It said based on a true story. It said serial killer. I was 100% sold.

So, speaking of badass bitches…. girl. For real. Lisa McVey is a true warrior queen and I’m so glad I watched this movie about her ordeal at the hands of serial killer, Bobby Joe Long. She was abducted and raped for a 26-hour-period when she was 17-years-old.

Having suffered long-term abuse throughout her life, mostly at the hands of her grandmother’s boyfriend, McVey says she tapped in the “survivor skills” she’d cultivated in order to overcome her captor, not physically, “but psychologically.” McVey said: “It worked. I’m still here.”

Lisa McVey is the only survivor of a serial killer who hunted in the Tampa Bay area, abducting, raping and murdering at least 10 women in 1984. The details she provided to the police are directly responsible for Long’s arrest.

I did a little research while I was watching the movie. One of my questions was why is this movie on now? Could there be a reason to shed light on McVey’s story this weekend? The answer is that Bobby Joe Long is scheduled to be executed by the state of Florida this coming Thursday, May 23rd.

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Review: The Homecoming by Andrew Pyper

“When mom called to tell me the news, I was surprised at first that Raymond Quinlan was capable of something so human as dying.”

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★★★★

Simon & Schuster | 2019

Opening Hook: Daddy had secrets.

Main Character: A normal guy wearing a good guy suit.

Plot Twisty-ness: Lost in the woods without a sense of direction.

I’m a huge fan of Blake Crouch. And this book by Andrew Pyper is giving me some serious Crouch vibes and I’m not mad about it. This is the first book I’ve read by Pyper but it probably won’t be my last. The Homecoming was pretty much the shit if you’re into dark thrillers with a horror-sci-fi undertone.

The Quinlan family has lost their patriarch, the mysterious and absent Raymond Quinlan. He was a workaholic who left his children – Aaron, Franny and the youngest, Bridge – with some daddy issues. But all his work and bad parenting also left behind a few million in assets, so how bad can an absent father really be in that case?

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Belfountain is a huge estate in the PNW that includes cabins, a lodge and an old Christian summer camp on the grounds. It’s worth a cool thirty million in the right market conditions and it technically now belongs to the remaining Quinlans, But, in order for them to get their hands on their cut of their father’s will, they have to agree to spend 30 days on the estate, with no contact to the outside world.

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