Review: Stiff – The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

★★★★

Penguin | 2004

Filed Under: Thinking about your own expiration date has never been more fun!

I think if you’re into the macabre and the dark side of life, or death as it were, then this book is recommended reading for you.

Truth be told, I am not a science-brained kind of girl. Or history. Or geography. Or math. Really anything that requires a level of intelligence that is based on facts and an excessive amount of information and concentration.

Those are just not my strong suits.

As much as my high school teachers would want to make me feel bad about that with those shitty grades I kept getting, I’ve accepted myself now as an adult. I fully embrace that I will never be able to help my stepkids with science or math homework. They could ask me about English and art though. But, I do appreciate logic and thoughtfulness.

I do have some intelligence, thank you.

With that in mind, Mary Roach makes heavy scientific topics, experimentation and the history of anatomy and scientific discovery, easy enough for this dumb-dumb to understand. And even find funny! Roach imbues her writing with levity and a flirtatious tone that makes this more entertaining and less textbook.

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Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

“…We often mistake love for fireworks – for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm – and constant.”

★★★★

Celadon Books | 2019

Filed Under: You know how you want to kill your spouse sometimes?

There was a lot of hype surrounding this book’s release, and for the most part, it was deserved. I mean, it didn’t totally blow my bits off and it didn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel when it comes to thrillers with unreliable narrators, but, for a debut novel it’s pretty impressive and I had a fun time reading it, so one eggplant up for Mr. Michaelides.

Alicia, an artist, killed her photographer husband. Shot him in the head repeatedly while he was tied to a chair, as a matter of fact. She’s been silent every day since. Locked up in a psych hospital, she hasn’t uttered a word in nearly seven years.

Theo Faber is a psychotherapist who is overly confident that he can crack Alicia’s proverbial silent nut. He takes a job in the hospital where she is remanded and starts his mostly one-sided conversations with Alicia in the hopes of getting her to finally explain why she did what she did to her husband, who by all accounts, she was madly in love with.

I don’t know about all of you, but while I jokingly say I’d like to murder the shit out of my husband sometimes, I don’t really mean it. Obviously, when he clips his toenails in bed and I say that I could really, truly smother him with a pillow until all the life drains from his body over it, I’m just speaking metaphorically.

Anyway!

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Review: Blood for Blood (Ziba MacKenzie, #1) by Victoria Selman

★★★

Thomas & Mercer | 2019

Filed Under: If Sherlock Holmes lacked a personality.

*Shakes fist at sky* I just want to read a legitimately complex female character! Just one!

Okay, so I liked this and it’s also a disappointment in some big ways at the same time, so… *fart noises*

Here goes my ranty review. I’ll try to highlight the positive stuff, but we all know that’s not my strong suit.

I could give some line about my expectations being too high when it comes to female-led crime fiction, or it’s not the book, it’s me, but I won’t because I refuse to apologize for wanting to find a female character who isn’t desperately crippled by a man in some way that doesn’t allow for robust characterization to occur outside of what revolves around that man. It’s fucking annoying me at this point.

Ziba MacKenzie is former special forces and an expert criminal profiler. SPECIAL FUCKING FORCES. She has a huge brain stuffed with lots of knowledge that is both practical and theoretical. Like, she can recite facts about serial killers but can also save lives in dire situations.

amber rose conan obrien GIF by Team Coco

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Review: No Exit by Taylor Adams

“The difference between a hero and a victim? Timing.”

★★★★★

William Morrow | January 2019

Filed Under: Did we learn nothing about isolated rest stops from Michael Meyers?!

This is my first five-star read of the year. And thank the god of thunder, because I was starting to get a little cranky as nothing has really been knocking my bits off. Whose fault is that really? Mine? Because of my choices? Get out of here! I don’t want to hear it!

Reading No Exit was an exercise in cinematic writing. It would be easy to say it was written with a movie option in mind (and maybe it was,) but maybe the plotting and timing of the story are just so fucking just good that the writing takes on a vibrant cinematic quality, and therefore, it seems like it should be a movie.

And it definitely should.

I would honestly give this five stars just based on the writing skill alone. It was that seamless and riveting. And my friends and regular readers know I don’t give out my stars easily. You have to earn this shit from me. You want easy stars? Go to the reviewers who aren’t dead inside with a stick up their ass.

It’s all ass sticks here, baby!

I do it because I love you and I want you to have an honest opinion from someone who isn’t worried about feelings and blah blah blah.

andre braugher brooklyn 99 GIF by Brooklyn Nine-Nine

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Review: The Winters by Lisa Gabriele

★★★½

Viking | 2018

Filed Under: A stepmother who my stepkids should be nicer to!

Just like other reviews aplenty will tell you, this novel is inspired by a classic novel and blah blah blah. I don’t know the book. I might know the author’s name? I’ve never read it and I didn’t know any of the “inspiration” going into reading this, so it really makes zero difference to me whatsoever.

Look, I never claimed to be a refined reader.

I read this novel purely for the gothic feel of the synopsis and because I’m a stepmother married to an older(ish) man and those themes resonated with me. I haven’t found many stories centring on stepmothers/second wives that are actually mystery/thrillers and don’t paint step-parents as some ridiculous evil creature to be feared and ousted.

I wagered, because this book was told from the stepmother’s point of view, there was a good chance she wasn’t the villain per se. And thankfully, I was right! The stepmother isn’t the villain for once! She’s more of a saviour, which is totally how I see myself, just with less doing things that make anyone’s life better, and more being so peeved that I never get to play my PlayStation anymore that I bought a second one out of passive aggressive spite. Like, I’m so selfless. LOL.

unbreakable kimmy schmidt xanthippe voorhees GIF

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Review: An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

“You can’t judge someone’s internal state by their external attributes.”

★★★★

January 2019 | St. Martin’s Press

Filed Under: Make-up artist seeks quick cash by being a liar

I’m a total sucker for anything that is psychologically leaning. And I don’t mean the trend of “psychological thrillers.” I mean real psychology, human nature, predicting behaviour and analyzing it. I’m a straight-up glutton when it comes to that kind of heady shit.

Not for any sinister reason. It’s like not I’m trying to figure out the best way to appear human or something. If I was smarter, I probably would have been a psychologist. In another part of the multi-verse perhaps I am.

But in the here and now that we find ourselves trapped in (there’s been some kind of tear in the fabric of our universe and we ended up in a strange hell where Trump and Putin are going to destroy all life on Earth, I’m sure of it,) I’m just a girl with a deep fascination for psychology and no way to really express that except to watch endless true crime documentaries and read books like An Anonymous Girl, and have people think I’m weird. It’s worth it.

Image result for leslie knope not embarrassed

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Opinion: AJ Finn Is Fucked Up (Allegedly) …and you should be informed before making the decision to support his work, but it’s totally up to you and I’m not here to shame you either way! Yes, this is the title of the post.

This might be the most exciting bit of news to hit the book world in I don’t even know how long. I mean, typically, I don’t think of the publishing world as very exciting with a lot of breaking news. It’s not like watching Trump trying to be President or anything.

But talk about a twisted bookish controversy that dropped this week!

If you’re not yet aware, wunderkind author AJ Finn – aka Dan Mallory – is, allegedly a total fucking sociopath and pathological liar.

Read the original article by Ian Parker for The New Yorker here and get ready to have your mind blown.

It’s a bit of a lengthy read, but totally worth it to get the full effect of the mindfuck that is Dan Mallory/AJ Finn.

I’ve been joking that I feel personally victimized by this epic bullshit because I so wholeheartedly pushed The Woman in the Window on anyone that I could. I dug that book hard. But I can’t, in good faith, let that be the case any longer. Does anyone care, probably not, but I just have to let it be known. I mean, can you separate the artist from the art? That’s going to be a personal decision here for readers.

But to be honest, the real-life story of Dan Mallory is 100% more interesting than his book, at this point.

If you don’t have time to read the full article, I’m basically going to post a TL;DR of my favourite bits from the exposé here for you.

It should be noted, even though I’m not going to be writing at length about it, that the original article makes a really amazing point of how easy it is for white men to fail up, and how our institutions are constructed to let this happen, even when they are known pieces of shit.

Sorry, alleged pieces of shit.

Truly, it’s worth 30 minutes of your time to read.

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Review: Her Last Move by John Marrs

★★★½

Thomas & Mercer | 2018

Filed Under: A subway nightmare, and I’m not talking about Jared

I don’t know why I thought this was going to be a serial killer “thriller”… I mean, in some ways it is. There is a serial killer. And cops. And stuff is happening.

But, holy shit, this might be the most depressing crime fiction novel I’ve ever read. John Marrs are you OKAY? Blink twice! This just hit me dead centre in all my sad feels like a British episode of This Is Us or some shit.

I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I will say this: one of the main reasons I love crime fiction so much – besides the psychologically fascinating elements – is that the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

The world is shitty enough and bad guys seem to win a lot, especially lately. So, it’s nice to be able to immerse yourself in a world where the bad guy is going to get his just desserts, sooner or later. I love to know, no, I need to know, despite the overwhelming evidence around us, that good will triumph over evil.

And for that to not necessarily happen in a way that feels satisfying like it typically does with novels of this kind, is a bit of a punch in the gut.

Kudos to John Marrs for bringing everyone down, I guess.

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Review: Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

“Little girls are different from little boys: they’re made of sugar and spice and scar for life.”

★★★★★

HQ | 2017

Filed Under: Unreliable narrator meets Weekend at Bernie’s.

Truthfully, I only read this because I found out Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ellen are turning it into a mini-series. And I am not the kind of OG Buffy fan to ignore a Sarah Michelle project. So here we are.

I’m so sorry to my more discerning thriller friends who really didn’t like this and were hoping I’d be busting in here with a signature snotty review about how crap this book is; how it took every element of a thriller novel it could possibly fucking think of and used all of them on one character in a short 260-page sitting.

But I’m not.

Because this entertained the fuck out of me.

Maybe I’m still feeling the holiday glow that’s keeping my heart three times its normal size like the Grinch, but this book hit me in all the right psychological thriller sweet spots. I was so enamoured that I read it over one Saturday afternoon. And I never do that, you guys!

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DNF Review: Murder on the Rocks by Clara Nipper

“I’m fighting crime with my twat.”

★

Bold Stroke Books | 2016

DNF @ 52%

Filed Under: The Case of the Unexpected Butt Plug

Soooooo, honestly what the fuck is this? It’s been a while since I read something this cringe-worthy.

Part of my bookish New Years’ resolution is to tackle my backlog of Netgalley arcs that I’ve been slacking on reading so hard that it’s kind of embarrassing at this point. This is one of the books in my backlog. And it’s going to be my first ever DNF.

That’s right, this book has forced me to turn over a new leaf – my DNF leaf. That’s a thing.

First of all, let’s talk about how this is presented to the reader – as a detective crime fiction novel. But, as far as I read, this book fits that category in only the most basic sense.

The main character, Jill Roberts, is a detective. Check.

She visits a couple of crime scenes. Check.

And that’s about it.

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