Review: The Bedwetter – Journal of a Budding Psychopath by Lee Allen Howard

★

Three First Names | 2019

Filed Under: Electric piss fantasy

This book is homophobic, misogynistic and gross-out horror for the sake of shocking the reader, and has zero literary value. Straight up. It’s garbage for the people who like garbage. So if you do, then please, jump onto the pee-soaked bed! It’s waiting for you!

Me, I’m using the rubber cover. I’m not prudish or easily offended or sensitive by any means, and I usually have no issue with a book that includes offensive themes with purpose, but this book has no purpose.

I am struggling to find the point to any of the fucked up things I just read. It feels like it exists only to have put demented thoughts onto paper. It exists just to be awful. There is no reason or moral or satisfaction to the ending. And I guess that’s just not my thing at all when it comes to stories. No judgement if it’s yours, but I can’t do it.

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Author Interview: Megan Goldin

This is my last post on the Blog Tour for The Escape Room by Megan Goldin.

If you haven’t already, click here to read my review. And click here to read an excerpt from the book provided by the publisher. The blog tour for this debut thriller is running until August 13th, so make sure you check out other blogger’s posts and reviews and opinions. But always remember, mine is the most important.

I really liked this book. Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you’re assuming that I’m just kissing ass because I was invited on this blog tour. There are only two things I can say to that. One, are you new around here? And two: check out my blog tour for The Ancient Nine, because that book was a snoozer and I was super honest about it, making it awkward for everyone involved.

Thankfully, St. Martin’s Press didn’t hold it against me, so obviously they’re cool and you should definitely buy all of their books if you want to support dope publishing houses.

(That was definitely ass kissing.)

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Blog Tour: The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

Get in losers, we’re going Blog Touring!!

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour train for The Escape Room by Megan Goldin! I’ve got reviews! I’ve got an author Q&A. I’ve got an excerpt from the book that’s going to make you work out the hold button at the library or “add to cart” at your favourite book store!

This is a totally dope debut thriller that I gave four-stars – which is essentially a less bitchy reviewer’s 5-stars – so clearly you’re going to want to add this clever tale of revenge to your completely unrealistic TBR pile. And good news! It’s officially on sale today! Amazon! Indigo! Ebooks! Physical copies! There’s no stopping this blog tour train now! Choo-fucking-choo, bitches!

*clears throat*

Anyway, this book has everything you look for in a thriller. The characters are vibrant, the setting is well researched without being so explainy that you feel like you’re reading a text book on wall street finance, and the revenge plot is so satisfying it’ll make you want to lock some people up in an elevator and do some insider trading.

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Review: The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

‘Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.’

★★★★

St. Martin’s Press | 2019

Filed Under: Corporate team building at its most murdery

Let me introduce you to my favourite revenge thriller of 2019. I mean, so far because it’s only July, but whatever. It’s not like my TBR is a cornucopia of revenge tales. Pretty sure it’s mostly serial killers.

The Escape Room is balls-the-walls wild, while still being grounded and realistic. I think that’s why I liked it so much – it was the perfect combination of over-the-top moments that exist just to be fun, mixed with a true-to-life high finance setting and realistic themes of suicide, loss, financial struggle and degrees of sexism.

The author took things that are honest and real, and that most readers will be able to find some thread of connection to, and kicked it up a notch with fantastical plot elements.

This debut novel is a tale of revenge that’s going to 100% fire you up to enact vengeance on your enemies. I’m looking at you, dude in my office who complained about the memes at my desk!

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The Third Annual Book Blogger Awards: I Was Fucking Nominated!

Well, this is pretty fucking cool! I’m one year into book blogging, and would you just look at me with ten or so people knowing who I am and shit.

A couple of weeks ago I was getting tagged in posts where I was “nominated” by dope book bloggers for the first stage of these awards and I was all, Thank you, but…

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on and I didn’t know it ran in two stages. I was just really touched that anyone was nominating me for fucking anything. But today, I found out that my little murder blog made the cut to the next stage of the awards where you, the reader, actually get to vote, and I am all:

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Review: Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson

★★★

William Morrow | 2019

Filed Under: No one cares about your sports trophies in real life.

The first book I ever read by Peter Swanson was The Kind Worth Killing and it totally impressed me enough to grab a four-star rating from my crabby, judgmental ass. Despite the characters being dull as hell, the plot was completely engrossing and the twists, duelling narrations and dark Strangers on a Train-like premise kicked me right in the crotch.

Since then, I’ve picked up Swanson’s work a few more times with optimistic expectations and have struggled with each reading. Fuck me for being positive, I guess. Before She Knew Him is no exception to that struggle. It’s better than All the Beautiful Lies (which was a goddamn snoozer,) but it’s still not touching me the way my first time with Swanson did (that’s what she said.)

This, like a lot of Swanson’s work, seems to borrow heavy inspiration from Hitchcock, but just isn’t doing it as well as the original or adding anything new to the template. Before She Knew Him has serious Rear Window vibes when Hen and her douchebag husband, Lloyd, move to a small town outside of Boston so that Hen can find some peace and quiet while attempting to get the symptoms of her bipolar disorder under control. She’s an artist who works from home, and wouldn’t you just know it, she eventually suspects her neighbour, Matt, is a serial killer. BUT NO ONE BELIEVES HER dun dun dunnnnn…

Also, a serial killer named Matt? Bruh.

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

★★★

HarperCollins | 2013

Filed Under: 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 the news and been replaced by, well, mostly Trump for fuck’s sake, this is certainly a story to keep a spotlight 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

★★½

Flatiron Books | 2019

Filed Under: Phone, keys, wallet

What in the actual fuck?

Why did you do this to me, Feeney?!

Sometimes I Lie was one of my favourite reads of 2018, so I was pretty pumped to read the second offering from this author, but unfortunately, I’m W-T-F-ing all over the place.

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 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,) sent me her ARC copy from the US – yes, literally PAID shipping to send me this book – 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 most countries are on a map, but I know that much.

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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.”

Image result for the haunting of hill house book

★★

Viking | 1959

Filed Under: THERE ARE TOO MANY DOORS.

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 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.

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.

★★★½

St. Martin’s Press | 2018

Filed Under: A baby deer learning how to walk, but after being gaslit by a psychopath.

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 their 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, The Wife Between Us 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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