Review: Guess Who by Chris McGeorge

“Today, we are going to be playing a little game of Murder.”

★★★½

Opening Hook: Basically a classic Kesha song

Main Character: If Maury and Robert Stack had a baby, but that baby was drunk all the time

Plot Twisty-ness: Jigsaw would be proud

I went into this novel with every intention of loving it completely. I swear to Thor. But okay, obviously I didn’t completely get there. Story of my life. No one is shocked.

Guess Who started off as a five-star read until I passed the halfway mark and that’s when things fell off the chart. For the first half of the book, it is very much SAW meets Clue, just minus the horror element. But it does create a sinister, frantic pace and tone that definitely had me hooked. It’s a locked-room mystery that feels both extravagant and desperate at first, at that definitely worked for me in a totally non-sexual sexual way.

Morgan Sheppard is a TV star who has made a living doing a Maury meets Unsolved Mysteries-style show called Resident Detective. As a child, he solved the murder of his math teacher and created a very successful career riding (read: exploiting) that wave. Through his fame, he’s turned into an alcoholic, drug addict and womanizer. The only problem is, Sheppard has been full of shit for a very long time. And someone knows it. And someone hates him.

Continue reading “Review: Guess Who by Chris McGeorge” →

True Crime Tuesday: The Halloween Killer (& My Hometown Murder Update)

It’s almost here! Can you feel it? Halloween night creeping ever closer?

Do you have your costumes ready? Your pumpkins carved? Have you eaten all of the candy you were supposed to be saving for young, innocent children dressed as tigers and bumblebees that make your ovaries go, “You’re 32!! You better decide if this is cute enough to make you want this sooner rather than later!!”

Huh? Yeah, me neither.

To help us prepare for the big night – because the countdown is officially on! – I’m back with another Halloween inspired TCT to really help scare the shit out of you on October 31st.

You’re going to be sitting around, waiting for the knock on the door, watching a scary movie, and suddenly there it will be – a memory of that time I told you about people being fucking murdered in their homes after handing out candy. And you’ll think, THAT BITCH.

Or you’ll be out at a party, dressed up in your sexy slice of pizza costume or your sexy Big Bird costume or your sexy hot dog costume or your sexy Pikachu costume or your sexy Eleven from Strange Things costume (she’s just a child, what is wrong with you?) and suddenly there it will be – a memory of that time I told you about people being fucking murdered walking home drunk in their sexy Halloween costumes. And you’ll think, THAT CUNT.

BUT FIRST…

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Review: The 17th Suspect by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

★★★

Opening Hook: A pretty standard for the genre death scene

Main Characters: TONE IT THE FUCK DOWN

Plot Twisty-ness: B for Beffort.

So, this is the first review I’m posting on my blog of this series, but here’s the ~~sordid~~ background on me and this series:

I have read every single one of the books in this series. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Even the novellas.

You can find all of my reviews of them on Goodreads if you’re so inclined to watch my descent into pure, unadulterated hatred.

Oh, yes, that’s right. Hatred. I am well-versed in the Women’s Murder Club. And I fucking hate-read this series with a fiery, binge-y passion. Truthfully, I hate mostly everything Patterson writes.

Gather around, children and listen to your elder millennial: James Patterson is a fucking awful writer.

AWFUL. Continue reading “Review: The 17th Suspect by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro” →

Booknerd Wednesday: Mystery and Thriller Releases for Fall 2018!

We are officially-unofficially into the beginning of my favourite season!

Hoodies and pumpkins and leaves changing colour and no more sweat stains under my boobs or mosquito bites riddling my flesh. It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

You know what else there is to love about autumn? New book releases!!!

Here is my list of the top crime fiction/mystery/thriller/blahblahblah releases coming our way this season. Get your TBR shelves ready for the added weight!

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Review: A Wolf Like Me (Thomas Spell, #1) by Andy Fitz

★★★

Opening Hook: You know how you perform dark rituals sometimes?

Main Character: If a less zany Ace Ventura was a werewolf

Plot Supernatural-ness: A new world, but we’re keeping Merlin

Okay, first things first: I do not typically read werewolf fiction because I’m not a big fan of the werewolf mythos unless I’m playing Skyrim and become one to join the Companions, then it can come in handy.

Given the choice that we typically get, vampires or werewolves, pick one! I am much more into vampires.

Not the sparkly kind who fall in love and just want to do good even if their hearts are cold…awwwww. But like Gary Oldman’s Dracula, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or some 30 Days of Night absolute horror. That to me is so much more interesting and creepy. Vampires are the first horror monster to scare me as a child, making me pull the blanket up to my neck at night as if that would protect me.

People who turn into big, scary dogs is just kind of weird. But I get the appeal to horror fans.

That being said, this book is pretty decent even for a werewolf hater like myself.

Continue reading “Review: A Wolf Like Me (Thomas Spell, #1) by Andy Fitz” →

True Crime Tuesday: My Hometown Murder

Good morning friends, lovers and strangers! It feels sooo goood to be back with a new edition of #TCT.

The end of August was SO busy for me I barely posted anything around here, but I got a lot done at home, so I’m not complaining. We’re just here for a good time, right?

Before we get into it, how was everyone’s long weekend?! Really, I want to know. I had a family BBQ, played some Battleborn with my husband and yesterday I deep cleaned my car.

You don’t understand what a big deal that was. I bought my car in 2015 and this was the first time I’ve ever cleaned the inside of it.

It was time. There were puppy puke stains everywhere. A little heads up that puppies can have motion sickness for the first year of their life would have been nice.

Besides that, I’ve been doing so much stuff at home all month that last week I actually slipped a disk in my lower back and I was laid up in bed for three days. Welcome to your 30s – where a Sunday afternoon of yard work means you are a cripple for half the week.

We also had some crazy excitement about two weeks ago in my neighbourhood. And that’s what this post is going to be about. That’s right! When I say MY HOMETOWN MURDER, I fucking mean it!

Now, I have to say I’m a little bit hesitant to share this story because it essentially tells you exactly where I live *nervous laugh.* But it’s too close to home, too intriguing and too big of a story right now in my city to not share with you guys.

So please, just promise not to stalk me okay?

This week’s true crime story is the Kitchener House Explosion! Dun dun dunnnnn…

Continue reading “True Crime Tuesday: My Hometown Murder” →

Review: The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper

“The human soul isn’t sold once but rather slowly and methodically and piece by piece.”

★★★

Opening Hook: A politician, a dead woman and a car ~~walk into a bar~~ drive off of a bridge

Main Character: A bowl of oatmeal wearing khakis

Plot Twisty-ness: If you turned Washington D.C. into a corn maze

A word of advice, don’t read books that are outside of your interests because you have an intellectual crush on the author.

What are my interests, you might ask? Why did this book fall outside of them? Well, I’ll tell you…

This novel is about Charlie Marder, a newly appointed US Congressman.

He’s married to a zoologist (for some fucking reason) with a baby on the way, marching into Washington ready to make some positive changes guided by his strong moral compass and naivete. He has taken over the seat for a disgraced politician who was found dead after charges of corruption and racketeering.

Then there’s a mysterious note, a shooting in the Capitol, lots of talk about communism. McCarthy makes an appearance, as does JFK and numerous other real-life players in 1950s D.C. A dead girl, a car crash and more communism and J. Edgar Hoover and Senate hearings and lobbyists.

A shadowy network of secret societies, a nefarious group known as the Hellfire Club who will stop at nothing to get what they want, soon have Charlie in their clutches. After some codes to decipher and some deep national secrets to Nicholas Cage out of the Library of Congress, Charlie realizes he’s not just trying to save himself, but that the fate of the whole country rests in his hands! Gasp! Shock!

And then the N-word gets uttered a time or two. You know how those racial tensions were back when ladies knew their place! Am I right?!

Continue reading “Review: The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper” →

Review: The Confession by Jo Spain

“That was us at the beginning of our fairytale. But here’s the thing about fairytales. Sometimes they’re darker than you can ever imagine.”

★★

Opening Hook: As shocking as a golf club to the head

Main Character: I won’t be RSVPing to the pity party

Plot Twisty-ness: I guess anything can be called a thriller these days

I don’t think I’ve ever read a “thriller” this unimpressive before. And by that I mean, it’s like the author wasn’t even trying. For real, this was slowwwwwwwww. Boring, even.

I’m in the minority with my opinion, and that’s fine. But my opinion is the right one. HAHAHA just kidding (kind of.)

The Confession by Jo Spain is billed as a dark thriller, but it’s really more of a depressing autobiography of the main characters whose POVs we ~~have to endure~~ get to experience; how they got to that moment in 2012 when a banker is getting his head bashed in by a stranger with a golf club. These POVs take us all the way back to childhood in some cases, and quite honestly it was tedious as hell and in most cases, completely fucking irrelevant.

This approach to the storytelling drained all the energy out of the plot, making it feel sluggish, washing out anything that could be considered a shock or a twist.

There was something in the telling of events that lent itself more to realism, and while that is an accomplishment in contemporary novels, this was supposed to be a thriller. The goal being to thrill the reader with the shock of events we don’t experience in real life (hopefully.) This was anything but thrilling unless you consider your own yawns thrilling.

Continue reading “Review: The Confession by Jo Spain” →

Review: There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

“People live through such pain only once; pain comes again, but it finds a tougher surface.”

★★★

Opening Hook: Start your egg timers

Main Character: A fish-out-of-water, almost literally.

Plot Twisty-ness: Too busy writing characters making out to remember to write the twists

I’m going to try to be nice.

And I’m going to try to be nice because while I didn’t really love this like I wanted to, I also didn’t hate it on its face. It’s not a bad novel in terms of writing, in fact, I think Stephanie Perkins has a promising narrative voice, she just doesn’t know what’s she’s doing with a horror novel.

I read this as part of my search to find a YA thriller that I actually want to rave about after I finish the last page, and I had high hopes this would be that novel.

It’s supposed to be a horror/thriller. It’s supposed to be, as per the promotion, “Scream meets YA.” The title, the cover – it’s all saying READ ME SO I CAN SCARE YOU!

You compare something to Scream and I say GIMME NOW.

I love Scream. I love all teen slashers. I grew up on that shit. It’s an important part of my developmental stages from child to teen to adult… which probably explains a lot.

But this is only comparable to Scream in the most basic way.

Teens. Killer killing those teens. Small town scared. End of.

This is not a horror. Though it did start off with enough sinister vibe to really catch my attention, the rest of the novel failed to live up to that feeling of suspense.

This is, for all intents and purposes, a romance novel set against a horror story backdrop.

This is horny teens fucking and drooling over each other, and then in between some random characters, who you don’t give a shit about, die.

Continue reading “Review: There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins” →

Review: Fellside by M.R. Carey

“Rough edges were what you needed because they were what you sharpened yourself against. Nobody ever got sharp from lying in a feather bed.”

★★½

Opening Hook: Who knew arson could be boring?

Main Character: Could not be anymore self-torturing

Plot Twisty-ness: Good for insomnia

I was really interested in reading this book, but once I cracked this baby open my interest quickly petered out, giving way to an overall feeling of not really giving a shit mixed with annoyance and yawning.

Jess has been given heavy prison time for deliberately starting a house fire that not only destroyed her face and injured her asshole heroin addict boyfriend, but also killed a 10-year-old boy named Alex. Jess essentially martyrs herself, accepting her punishment with a heaping side of self-flagellation, deciding her time in prison will be short once she goes on a hunger strike/suicide mission. The only problem is, Jess can’t remember any of the sins she’s been told she committed, so she just takes everyone’s word for it (like you would.) As she withers away in the prison infirmary, dead Alex comes to her with an afterlife request – find out who really killed him, because he’s sure it wasn’t Jess and he can’t find peace without knowing.

The blurb is essentially Orange is the New Black but with ghosts and mystery.

Once you get past the blurb though it’s none of those things.

Continue reading “Review: Fellside by M.R. Carey” →