*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-May 2025)
The Cloisters are located in Washington H*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-May 2025)
The Cloisters are located in Washington Heights, sitting on a hill in Fort Tryon Park on the Hudson River it is a world away from the hustle and bustle of New York City. The structure is made up of elements from abbeys in France and Catalonia that incorporate four cloisters, the Cuxa, the Saint-Guilhem, the Bonnefont, and the Trie. There are three gardens containing rare medieval species of plants but most people come to see the Met's collection of 5,000 pieces of medieval art. Illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, stained glass, paintings, and sculptures adorn the Gothic chapel, the Fuentidueña chapel, the Langon chapel, the Romanesque hall, and the Treasury room. With even more treasures contained in the library and archives. This is where Ann Stilwell will be spending her summer. An Early Renaissance scholar from Whitman, a small college no one has heard of in Washington, she had secured a position in the Summer Associates Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art being a glorified intern. It wasn't what she had planned, but it was the only thing that panned out. And it was only for three months. But it was a start. A way to get away from home and its dark memories. When she arrives at the Met they inform her that they no longer have a place for her. She is nothing more than an administrative oversight. She can't believe what she's hearing. She's frozen to the spot. Unable to move when in walks Patrick Roland, the curator of The Cloisters. He's there to inform them that his temporary, and totally unsuitable, associate curator has left him in the lurch. He needs more hands and right there in front of him is Ann. She'll be perfect. And all Ann can think is that it's serendipity, that if she hadn't sat there a moment too long she wouldn't be being swept away from Museum Mile into another world, a sheltered haven of enigmatic curators. Rachel Mondray, the curatorial associate, and Leo Bitburg, the gardener, become her closest friends. When Ann proves adept they decide to bring her into their world of shadowy secrets, rare book dealers, poisonous plants, and, above all, the tarot. The tarot is Patrick's infatuation. But his obsession isn't just academic, he's a true believer, and Ann's discovery of a 15th-century Italian tarot card from a deck previously thought lost changes everything. The power dynamics in the group shift and control is lost and one night things get out of hand and Patrick ends up dead. Any one of them could have done it, but Ann will make sure it isn't her who takes the fall.
I picked up The Cloisters because I have a fascination with the tarot. Not so much it's mystical powers with regard to divination, but the history and the art. Pamela Colman Smith's illustrations for the Rider-Waite Tarot deck are iconic. You would most likely recognize them even if you knew nothing about tarot they are that famous. So while I am more into the practical side of tarot, the mystical side, especially in fiction, is irresistible to me. And the marketing for The Cloisters leaned into this dark academia vibe with a supernaturally aided power play via tarot. In fact Katy Hays went so far as to actually include Ann Stilwell's Guide to Reading Tarot with pages and pages of details about the Ferrara Deck. The major and minor arcana are laid out over twelve pages with associated gods and planetary rulers and detailed descriptions of the illustrations and their meanings. So I have to ask, if the tarot was seemingly so important why is it nothing more than a MacGuffin? You do not write the rules for an entire tarot deck to have that deck be a red herring! That just makes no sense. And yet that's exactly what this book did. The cards don't matter, it's just the shiny object that everyone wants because they think it will bring them power. It literally could have been anything. Hell, they're surrounded by medieval artifacts, why wasn't it a chalice? Go all Indiana Jones! Because the tarot brings baggage, it brings expectations, and none of those were met. There's nothing magical here other than a well told story about four people manipulating each other to see who comes out on top. Words are magic, so I don't need a promise of magic that is never fulfilled because now I feel cheated. I feel so let down. And I can't tell if it's because Katy Hays had other plans for when she outlined the book and what she ended up writing or it if was all an act of misdirection. A way for these sociopaths to justify their behavior by saying it's fate. By claiming the mystical when it's just the mundane. The Cloisters themselves gave such a sense of place, a sense of something bigger than them while still being precious, that I wish the actions of the characters matched the setting. Look to Rosemary's Baby. There is the sense of place, the wish fulfillment, and then the devil. This does show evil but it's not enough to save it from a failure to deliver. I can't help thinking that if Riley Sager was to do a rewrite, bring in a little more of Hill House, that this could be perfection. As it is, it's an incomplete deck lost to time....more
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Michelle Alameddine has a warning for Alex St*Special Content only on my blog, during Summer School (June-August 2025)
Michelle Alameddine has a warning for Alex Stern. Whatever is out there, beyond the Veil, it isn't just Grays. And while this advice is prescient it won't sway Alex. The late, unlamented, Dean Sandow planned for the Hellbeast to devour her Virgil, Darlington, because he was too smart for his own good. But those smarts meant that he survived. As a demon. A gentleman demon. Trapped in hell. And Alex is going to rescue her gentleman demon. Because that night, almost a year ago, she did nothing to save Darlington and has been struggling with her responsibilities and her guilt ever since. The members of Lethe are going to stage a sulfurous jailbreak. The problem is, hell doesn't like thieves. But it does like its murderers. Which might actually come in handy. It's not exactly like Alex's hands are clean. The problem confronting them is that first, they actually have to find a way into hell, and second, they have to do it without the Lethe board finding out. And they only have one clue, that the portal to hell, the Gauntlet, is on hallowed grown. They have literally searched all of New Haven's copious churches to no avail. Approaching Scroll and Key would seem the next logical step as they deal in portals but Alex isn't exactly their favorite person. Especially after her and Dawes trick them and things go catastrophically wrong. As in Darlington, the demon, is now trapped in a protective circle in the ballroom at Black Elm. And while the board doesn't know about Darlington's "return" they do know about the damage to Scroll and Key and strongly suspect what they were up to. What they were specifically told never to attempt. And while Darlington is "back" his soul is still in hell, meaning, this heist is just beginning. With time running out and all eyes on them they need to get Darlington's soul as soon as they can. Dawes has pieced together a ritual and once they realize that the Gauntlet is in Sterling Library, a very different kind of hallowed ground, they just need to assemble four murderers willing to take the journey. Thankfully anyone who's worked with Lethe long enough has gotten their hands dirty, which means that Alex, Dawes, and Detective Turner fit the bill. They just need a fourth, and they find that fourth in the surprising form of Bonesman Tripp Helmuth. He's a ray of sunshine with a surprisingly dark past. They are ready to die and go to hell. Who knows if they will make it back. Who knows if they will succeed. Who knows if they will come back alone.
Originally viewed as an epic series Leigh Bardugo has honed Alex Stern's story down to a trilogy. Which means that Hell Bent is now that problematic middle child. And it's an odd problem here. Because while fixing that which I found originally annoying in Ninth House, specifically the insular and esoteric details that only one who attended Yale would care about, and focusing more on the characters, she has lost some of the originality in this series. Hell Bent feels like it could be any other urban fantasy series, and at times there were strong Buffy the Vampire Slayer overtones. Hell Bent lacked the polish and precision of the first volume which is painfully obvious in the copious timeline errors. If there's one murder on a Saturday night and another on that Sunday morning, they aren't days apart. They aren't even day apart. But what we lose in the tight plotting and editing we gain in character development. By narrowing down the focus to only six characters and their journey to hell and back we can understand them better. In Ninth House Alex seemed to not only be fighting the Grays but fighting her very existence. She didn't understand her place in the world or what she wanted so she was all reaction not action. Which, yes, you can build a story that way, it's just not as compelling. Here we see how special Yale has become to her. It's the first real home she's ever had. There's always a roof over her head and breakfast foods in her pockets. She has friends she can rely on to help, not hurt her. She's falling in love with literature and spends copious hours just reading old paperbacks for enjoyment. The academic life suits her. This also makes her more protective of others, she's not just looking out for herself but her friends and, in particular, her mother. She is learning what it is to be an adult and survive in this world and it makes you care about her and Dawes and all the rest of them, even golden retriever Tripp, all the more. Which is why Leigh Bardugo's interpretation of vampires is so interesting and terrifying. While I don't consider myself an expert on vampires I know enough and the fact that in this universe vampires are actually demons that drain a human into nothing more than a husk and then become them is genius and terrifying. I don't know if it's been done before, but it felt fresh and original and, as previously mentioned, terrifying. Add in the soul revelation, and, well, yes, hints of Angelus, but also, something so unique that I almost forgave the more pedestrian plot points. Almost....more
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Anna Everdell's life has been turned upside d*Special Content only on my blog, during Summer School (June-August 2025)
Anna Everdell's life has been turned upside down by the arrival of Effie Fawkes. Her sister. Her twin sister. Her twin sister whom she never knew about. They were separated after their parents' death in the hope of surviving the curse that killed them. Anna was raised by her unlamented Aunt while Effie was raised by their mother's best friend Selene. The curse is such that they are fated to love the same man with deadly consequences. That man in Attis Lockerby. He is Selene's true child, unlike Effie, born and raised to break the curse. But Anna and Effie could never live without Attis so they must find another way. All three of them living together under Selene's roof isn't ideal but after the death of her Aunt, Anna can't face that house of horrors she called home. She was tortured her entire life and for what? To learn to hide her true self? Which might be a valuable skill in the current atmosphere. Protective coloration is needed with what's coming. Her Aunt might not have been wrong about the Hunters. There is a new government agency, the WIPS, the Witchcraft Inquisitorial and Prevention Services. They are tasked with investigating the rising cases of hysteria. And Anna's school, St. Olave's, is the epicenter of the hysteria, thanks in no small part to their coven's manipulations of mean girl Darcey. The school year starts with investigations and inquisitions. Things that were whispered about are now spoken aloud, that Effie, Anna, Manda, and Rowan are witches. It just so happens that on this one occasion they are right. The terror gripping London intensifies when on the one year anniversary of the death of the faceless women in Big Ben the ravens at the Tower of London start to act up. Everyone knows the legend, if the ravens leave the Tower London will fall. The Coven of the Dark Moon must therefore keep their heads down. Which is exactly what Effie doesn't want to do. She will never kowtow to anyone no matter if it endangers herself or others. And the coven is having teething issues as the member try to discover their affinities. Their powers are starting to develop but Anna's are still unpredictable and that puts everyone in danger. Anna and Effie need to find out what their mother learned about their curse and trace it back to it's origins in the 1600s in an attempt to break it. But even those who talk to the dead, the Hel Witches, don't seem able to help. The only one actually helping Anna is her ex Peter Nowell. He wants to "save" Anna. But it looks like she and her coven might be beyond saving.
In the modern era a witch hunt is a term used politically. Think of McCarthyism. Now that was an actual political witch hunt. But in the current era there is a certain bombastic politician who likes to throw the phrase around. A lot. He might just be the most powerful person in the world to my dismay and the dismay of many others. I'm sure he probably doesn't even know what it means. He just says it as a way to get his followers to believe he is being wrongly persecuted. Because, sadly, most witch hunts were about punishing the innocent, usually clever women for being helpful to their communities, though there are also cases of mass delusions and well, plain old spite and revenge. This certain politician is all about the spite and revenge. He plays the victim for sympathy again and again. But just his intoning of the phrase "witch hunt" repeated ad infinitum has made it relevant again. Not because he is the victim of said witch hunts, but because he is carrying them out on innumerable people unjustly. It is the classic case of Republican projection, whatever they say the Democrats are doing to them they are doing themselves. It's reprehensible. But because of the omnipresence of witch hunts this lends a grounding in reality to Shadowstitch. Yes, they really are witches, yes, they might have done some questionable curses, but that doesn't make the witch hunt justified. It's just rounding up the "other" and punishing them for not falling into line. Just because a book is fantasy doesn't mean it's not reality. Some of the harshest truths and bleakest realities can be seen clearer when focused through the lens of fantasy. Just look to Andor. This is a show set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and yet there isn't a more relevant show out there that speaks to this moment in history. The Ghorman Massacre, holy hell, it is so powerful and terrifying because I can see that happening at any moment to people I love and care for. Shadowstitch also speaks to this moment. But it speaks to it in the way Arthur's Miller's The Crucible did, which besides being about teenagers, please ignore the anachronistic use of that word for the Salem witch trials, was about McCarthyism. It all comes full circle. But with a dash of the Third Reich. Because where would a book about teenage witches be without some Nazis Youths....more
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The inhabitants of Hemlock Circle, a quai*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-May 2025)
The inhabitants of Hemlock Circle, a quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac, are the same when Ethan Marsh moves home as they were when he left over twenty years ago. It's like the neighbors are trapped in amber. There's the old Barringer place on the left, continuing clockwise, the Van de Veers', the Wallaces', the Patel's, and the Chens'. Of the six original houses built in the late eighties only one isn't in the hands of its original owner. But no one holds onto the old Barringer place for long. Ethan has moved back home because his parents are moving to Florida and it would be easiest for them if he's around during the sale of the house. What they don't say is that he has nowhere else to go. But home brings with it unanswered questions from his past and a mystery that forever changed Hemlock Circle and gripped a nation. On Saturday, July 15th, 1994, Ethan and his best friend Billy Barringer set up a tent in Ethan's backyard. The ten-year-olds did this all summer, camping out within the safety of their own neighborhood. Only that night was different. Because when Ethan woke up on Sunday morning there was a large rend in the tent and Billy was gone. Billy became The Lost Boy. They searched everywhere, through the acres of preserved woodland surrounding the neighborhood, but he was just gone. Ethan still dreams about that night. Who took Billy and why? He always wakes when he hears the tent being slashed, never seeing the face of the culprit. He left home because he couldn't stand to see the constant reminder out his bedroom window of the last known location of Billy. But now that he's back home it's not just memories that are playing with him. First there's the motion activated lights on the houses. Lighting up one after another in the middle of the night. Then a baseball appears in his yard. A baseball thrown over the fence was his and Billy's secret code. Who else but Billy would know that? He decides to ask his neighbors. He wants to know who's playing with him. Everyone who was there the night Billy disappeared has returned to Hemlock Circle this summer. It seems portentous. And then he finds out his fellow neighbor and classmate, Ragesh Patel, is the police liaison for Billy's case and they've found something. They've found Billy. The dental records confirm it.
Riley Sager is the king of spooky nostalgia. His books often tap into his own past, the most blatant being , but due to the fact he's only four years older than me there's a universality to his tales for those raised in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Common ground that we all feel nostalgic for that he then twists ever so slightly to make unsettling. And one of the common fears of growing up during this period was kidnapping, it was the height of "stranger danger" and kids on milk cartons. There was quite the incident of "stranger danger" to one of my classmates in grade school, but that's a story for another time. So to have this character, Ethan, experience the worst nightmare of any child growing up then that isn't quicksand, it's relatable. In fact, that's why I enjoyed this book, it's relatable. I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone and kids were in and out of each other's houses. We moved in unruly gangs, playing elaborate city block-sized games of capture the flag. And I miss that. I don't just miss an easier time, I miss a time when everyone and their business was known to you. Your neighbors meant more than they mean today. The grandparents, the parents, and the kids all knew who you were and asked after your only family. There was a sense of community. I mean, this is still happening, I see the kids in my neighborhood roving around in gangs, but people aren't rooted to the same spot anymore. People pick up and move at a moments notice, whether it's due to job insecurity, the cost of living, or whatever life change that results in dislocation. Therefore you just don't have neighborhoods like Hemlock Circle anymore. More and more as everything becomes chaotic and unsettled I am searching for these nostalgic vibes that remind me of a time when I felt safe. Old shows, old books, things that bring comfort. And yes, Riley Sager brings me comfort. I know a lot of people would be questioning my sanity in that mystery and horror bring me comfort, but it's the subverting of the comforting within a set of rules. I mean, just look to Scream, it's a total comfort watch for my generation and it's because it's nostalgic and has rules. I should say, it has Rules, capital "R." Sadly, Randy Meeks, the king of the Rules, did not survive the sequel. But that didn't stop him from imparting his wisdom from beyond the grave. I'm sure he'd understand the pull of nostalgia, he was quite wise until he baited Mrs. Loomis. But his death for me will always be comforting. As comforting as a new Riley Sager book. No matter the death toll....more
*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-April 2025)
Ashley Smith and Emma Chapman might loo*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-April 2025)
Ashley Smith and Emma Chapman might look alike and matriculate at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London but that is where their similarities begin and end. Ashley is American, parentless, and never says the right thing. Whereas Emma is posh, wears cashmere, and grew up surrounded by her family in a manor house in the Cotswolds. She's perfect and always knows the right thing to say. Like when she heard that Ashley would be spending Christmas alone and invited her to join the family celebrations at Stravewood Hall. That was just the absolutely perfect thing to say and do. And here Ashley thought that Emma didn't like her. Now they will be the best of friends. Ashley is off to Clevemoor for Christmas! It's like something out of a romance novel or a murder mystery, a house that's all stone and stained glass and beams across the ceiling and servants quarters! But the real attraction comes in the form of Emma's brother, Adam. He's like Michelangelo's "David" come alive, but with cigarette breath and a penchant for whiskey. If Ashley's luck holds she might actually be in a romance. Though Ashley can't deny the evidence of her eyes when she goes with the siblings to the local pup, the Sheepfold. There she learns about Joanna Davies, a girl who went missing last summer, who might just have been dating Adam. He was questioned by the police and some still suspect him. But the oddest part is that Joanna and Ashley look alike. Her holiday is veering quickly toward the Gothic, a little bit creepy, and little bit sexy. Though Adam then fucks off back to London so Ashley doesn't know what to make of that. Especially as he left her a lovely Christmas present, a white cashmere scarf to keep her warm. Warm on her walks through the woods where she sees a menacing figure with a big bushy beard. Gothic thriller it is then now that the romantic lead has left. She shouldn't have doubted it when she's the doppelganger of a dead girl. Or when Emma returns to Stravewood Hall after being accosted by the menacing figure of Father Christmas. The same figure Ashley had seen. And that is all Ashley wrote. Because her diary ends prior to her brutal death. A diary that Emma has kept all these years with a newspaper article clipped and saved in the back detailing Ashley's murder. Because Emma "killed "Ashley. Set her up as the perfect victim. But why?
This is a novella in two parts. The first part, Ashley's diary, is perfection. It contains the hopes and desires of a young girl who is lovestruck and experiencing the Christmas of her dreams. Until it devolves into a nightmare. The second part is Emma explaining what actually happened and the guilt that weighs her down as she lives under another name in a country far from her family. Because the truth is, pause for spoiler, her brother, Adam, is a serial killer. And all his victims remind him of his sister. Because obviously he's working up to killing her. Which means way back in the eighties she invited Ashley to Stravewood Hall to be her brother's next victim. Ashley was the sacrificial lamb. Which is interesting when you look back on the events of her time in the Cotswolds. I actually liken it to what happened in season two of The White Lotus. Greg takes Tonya to Italy so that his old acquaintances, the 'Evil Gays,' can kill her. She's given the holiday of anyone's dreams. She is treated like a princess. In other words, she is given the treatment that you would give your dog on it's last day alive. Now I'm not denigrating dogs, I'm denigrating any humans who use the excuse of giving someone a perfect experience as some sort of balancing of the scales prior to murder. You can not balance out the scales here. One really good Christmas is not worth a lifetime of Christmases. Now if the person was actually dying, like said dog, well, then it's a sweet denouement to a life, not the brutal theft of a future. The problem I have with this second half is the ghostly aspect. We went from a top-notch, moody, thriller of a period piece with a lovesick narrator to a pale imitation of A Christmas Carol. Yes, Emma has a few more literal ghosts in her closet, but I feel like she should have had some sort of epiphany earlier. It shouldn't have taken her thirty years to get up the courage to rat out her brother. Because it wasn't just Ashley and Joanna, oh no, he's been killing all along. He's racked up quite the body count and if you were connected to one of the victims, how would you feel knowing that there was this person out there who could have stopped it? Personally Emma being haunted and on the run her entire life doesn't in the least make up for not speaking up. She's been a coward her entire life and, with regard to Ashley, a conspirator. I mean, I'll give the story props for trying something new, and I did enjoy it, it's just that it could have been something more. Something original, not Dickensian part deux. ...more
Edward Russett lives in a very organized and hierarchical society. What color you can see is everything, creating color castes, from the regal purplesEdward Russett lives in a very organized and hierarchical society. What color you can see is everything, creating color castes, from the regal purples to the proletarian greys. Eddie is a red living in a green world. Eddie has upset the balance of good behavior and polity by playing a prank on a purple, Bertie Magenta, son of Jade-under-Lime's purple prefect. But he also has dangerous notions on how to improve queuing. To atone for his errors in judgement and gain some humility he is being sent to the fringes of polite society to conduct a pointless chair census. His father, a Swatchman, who is, for all intents and purposes, a doctor, is accompanying him to East Carmine, to fill in for their recently deceased Swatchman, Robin Ochre. Little does Eddie realize what is about to happen to him could change everything. At a stop over at Vermillion, Eddie fails to see the last rabbit, but helps his dad save a grey illegally wrongspotting as a purple and is accosted by a girl with a very retrousse nose who is unaccountably rude and in danger of being sent to reboot to learn some manners. Eddie can't help being intrigued.
Arriving in East Carmine, a town where nothing interesting happens, a new Swatchman and his son sure cause a lot of excitement. From Eddie's new best friend, the shyster Tommo, trying to place him in the marriage market, to the prefects demanding respect and Eddie's return ticket to Jade-under-Lime, to a Lincoln swatch illegal drugs market, to suspicions of the old Swatchman being murdered, to the mysterious naked man who lives in their house that no one can openly admit to seeing, to the new surly maid, who happens to be Jane, the girl with the retrousse nose, Eddie's arrival has caused an avalanche of excitement to this small border town. But will Eddie, with his unwelcome queuing suggestions, be able to stay out of trouble? Can he avoid the everyday dangers of lightning, man-eating Yatveo plants, and swans, while staying on the right side of Tommo and the yellow prefect's son Courtland Gamboge? Plus what if he decides to abandon his half promise to the bitchy princess Constance Oxblood back home and make a go of it with Jane? That's if she, or the ill fated trip to High Saffron, doesn't kill him first...
Shades of Grey, the first book in a proposed series from Jasper Fforde, the author of the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime Series, is a cult favorite where ten years on fans of the book are still clamoring for more adventures from Brunswick and deMauve. From the man whose worldbuilding gave us a land where characters in books police their own plots, we are treated to another inventive story, this time centering on color. If you strip away all the color theory and color related aspects, you are left with a very basic, but solid, post apocalyptic, post something that happened world, akin to the best dystopian novels, the likes of Orwell's 1984. An evil, unseen government is trying to keep their people in line by separation, isolation, ignorance, and strict rules enforced by fear, even if the rules are more geared toward maintaining politeness than anything else. Enter plucky and likable Eddie, who has notions above his station and falls for a girl who hates his guts all the while butting heads with the local authorities and asking a few too many questions.
While the book is standing on firm dystopian soil, it's all the colorful bits of tosh that Fforde scatters throughout the narrative that makes this book easily one of my favorites. Of course, being in the arts, I could have a bias for color theory based jokes, but even with just a simple grasp of color gleaned from your box of Crayola's as a kid will make this book that much more multilayered and enjoyable. The color jokes run the gamut from the dictator's, I mean leader's, name being Munsell, the creator of the first workable and adapted color theory with the naming of hue, value, and chroma, to the test for the character's color placement, the Ishihara, being the test for color blindness in our world. But it's not just these, or the jokes of color pipes being upgraded from RGB to CMYK, sure to send any graphic designer into fits of hysterical laughter, but the way Fforde seamlessly integrates them into the plot and has color as the lynch pin of this society. Yet how did humans evolve so that they can only see specific color frequencies allowing this hierarchical society to form?
Because the thing is, color doesn't actually exist. I know this is a hard thing to grasp, especially if you start thinking about additive color when mixing paint. But the truth is that how we see color and how light works with subtractive color, where all colors combined equal white not black, gets you closer to understanding that everything we see is a product of our minds. Our minds interpret color and tell us what to see. Therefore what happened to these peoples minds that they can only see certain frequencies? Are their frequencies somehow jammed? There are only a few hints, one being that pupils aren't able to dilate anymore, always being a pinprick and making seeing in the dark impossible. The second is that when shown certain color swatches the brain starts to reconfigure, as if it's a computer. So did the evil overlords rewire human brains in order to exert control? Or did evolution take a weird and quirky step sideways. Every time I read this book I learn so much more but conversely end up with so many more questions.
But, as with any post apocalyptic society or even parallel society, it's the mystery of how our world devolved and became this world. Trying to work out exactly how things changed, and not just the physical changes, but other more significant ones. Like how did swans become large and such a danger? Why is there such a fear of lightning? Who knew rhododendrons would be such a threat? Also the little jokes where we know what things were, but that they have morphed into something totally different, like the titles of the mandatory musical theater adaptations being slightly off kilter... "Red Side Story" anyone? Or how they assume the RISK board game is not only a map of how the earth was, but of the color distribution of the inhabitants. Then of course you encounter the deeper mysteries of the plot that keep you reading late into the night. What really happened to Robin Ochre? What does reboot really entail? Because if someone told me they were sending me on the night train to Emerald City I know I'd be nervous.
Picking up this book again ten years after it was published I was still obsessed with the emotions facing Eddie when he learned what Mildew really is all while hoping that his spork loophole will solve the lack of spoons once and for all. And while there's a part of me that holds this book in a special place in my heart, it was the first unsolicited book that showed up on my doorstep after starting my blog, I re-read it with a critical eye. Fforde can sometimes get so caught up in his little jokes and Easter eggs, ones written for his own amusement, it's possible for the reader to feel alienated from the text; creating an unease that they are probably only catching ten percent of what is actually going on. Yet for me Shades of Grey is different. It works on so many different levels that even if you feel occasionally a little lost it's just another layer of the onion to discover when you next read it. Of course, I'm still desperate for any more information on Eddie's world. I want all the answers... but sometimes we are left wanting, just as Eddie and Jane were after their Ishiharas....more
*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-May 2025)
Kit McDeere is out of options. When she b*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-May 2025)
Kit McDeere is out of options. When she became a caregiver she never thought it would mean that years would pass by without barely even noticing. The patients changed, the routine didn't. And then her name was splashed across the papers. She was taking care of her mother who had terminal Cancer. Only her mother died of a drug overdose. Her name has been cleared but it is not clean and no one is willing to take a chance on her. No one except for another person with nothing left to lose. Lenora Hope was an urban legend when Kit was growing up. There was a rhyme and everything, "At seventeen, Lenora Hope. Hung her sister with a rope. Stabbed her father with a knife. Took her mother’s happy life. 'It wasn’t me,' Lenora said. But she's the only one not dead." Kit never thought Lenora was real, and yet she is. Lenora needs constant care, she's in her seventies and confined to a wheelchair from a series of strokes. The only way she can communicate is using her left hand, mainly taping out yes or no answers. And yet when Kit arrives at Hope's End she is terrified of this bedridden woman. It doesn't help that the previous beloved nurse disappeared in the night never to be heard from again. The story that Kit is told, that she had to leave for a family emergency, doesn't add up. Especially when Kit tries to put unpack in her new room. Because there is no room for her possessions because their place is taken up with the previous nurse's possessions. Clothes, books, even her medical kit. This doesn't make any sense. The other staff aren't that comforting, a house keeper, a cook, a young maid, and a groundskeeper. They all seem to be a part of the pall that hangs over the estate. And as for the house itself? How does anyone live here? The floor is canted as the whole house leans towards the ocean, promising that one day it will crash off the cliffs into the cold waters below. Could that be what happened to her predecessor? One day she got too close to the edge and over she went? Kit doesn't know what or who to trust, is the schoolyard chant tainting her perceptions, or are the cracks in the walls getting bigger, the creaks in the night, the shadows under the crack in the door to Lenora's room, everything is imbued with menace. And yet, she stays, because Lenora is able to laboriously type with her left hand, and she has promised to tell Kit the truth. But what if the truth is the most dangerous secret of all?
Riley Sager perfectly understands the building blocks of a good Gothic novel. It all goes back to family and location. Just think of Flowers in the Attic, AKA incest in the attic, the Gothic pulp of it's day, family and location. Here we have two families full of secrets and a location that is to die for, literally, it might just collapse into the ocean at a moments notice. The way that Sager weaves Lenora Hope's tragic history of lost love is the stuff of Gothic nightmares. A mother, father, and sister tragically murdered, and her, alone, living at the scene of the crime, trapped forever in the past, with only her loyal retainers. A woman who should be a subject of pity but instead is a subject of fear. Fear that works it's way into Kit McDeere's mind as her own family trauma is revealed. A mother dead, the Cancer was killing her but that isn't the cause of death. That death is why Kit is at Hope's End. But there's more. There's always more with Sager, and the way these two women's lives start to come together shows what a master storyteller he is. As for the house? I never really feel that a book can be considered Gothic without a memorable location. There are so many pretenders out there who don't realize this necessity. Hill House, Manderley, Wuthering Heights, Belasco House, and now Hope's End, these are the gold standard. These are places you dream about, places that haunt you. Places you never want to visit but after you read about can never leave. Hope's End is perfection, in the most decrepit, moldering, uninhabitable way possible. It's not just that the evidence of the murders still lingers, blood spots on the stairs, a missing pool table, and a broken chandelier, it's that the house is literally falling into the ocean. You could call it hubris to build a house on a cliff, but that just adds to Lenora's father haunting her forever, his vanity destroyed her in more ways than one. But what really got to me was the fact that once you're on the second floor there's a cant the house. It is leaning towards oblivion. This makes Hope's End a kind of fun house, or should I more correctly say a house of horrors? An attraction at a local fair that has an air of menace about it, where dark carnies prowl the space between tents, and the fun house is the most terrifying place you could be trapped. Every second that they stay in the house is a second too long. You know as they do, that everything will come crashing down in the end, but the wait for that end is agonizing. This book had me reading with baited breath, a not uncommon occurrence with Sager's writing, but the ending crashed on me like the weight of those stones on the ocean as Hope's End fell. That was some ride....more
*Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-May 2025)
Jess's life isn't exactly going to plan. *Special Content only on my blog, during Murder Most Foul (February-May 2025)
Jess's life isn't exactly going to plan. She's lost her job and her partner in quick succession when she gets a call from Australia saying that her grandmother Nora has had a fall and Jess needs to return home. Her grandmother might be eight-nine years old but the woman who raised her has always seemed so young so she doesn't understand the urgency in the doctors' voices. But it's not exactly like she can claim she's busy at the moment so she returns to the home in which she was raised, Darling House, in Sydney. There she tries to piece together how Nora could have fallen. This seems so unexpected, but when she starts to ask questions she realizes that the grandmother she thought she knew and loved had been acting odd lately. Nora had been secretive, furtively reading a book which she wouldn't let anyone else see. She might even have been digging around in the attic when she fell. This could all be dated back to a letter she got in the mail from a solicitor in New South Wales. But Jess can't think of any connection her grandmother had there until she remembers that Nora had an older brother who died right around the time that Jess came to live at Darling House. A brother who lived in New South Wales. Her grandmother's injury seems to be tied to a secret in the past and so Jess, being a journalist, even if she's currently unemployed, starts to dig. Thomas Turner returned to Australia after World War II. He decided to settle in Tambilla in the Adelaide Hills. There he purchased and renovated a house that was commonly referred to as the Wentworth House. A large, sprawling home that had a tragic backstory, but not nearly as tragic as the one that would befall the house once it was rechristened Halcyon. Thomas brought his English bride Isabel to live there with their expanding family. When December 1959 rolled around they had four beautiful and precocious children, Matilda, John, Evie, and a newborn baby girl. On Christmas Eve Isabel took the children down to the creak to escape the heat of the day. That is where they lay when Percy Summers, the proprietor of the local grocery store, found them. They were all dead. Except for the baby. The baby was nowhere to be found. It was assumed that the baby was dragged off by some wild animal. This entire sorry affair was documented by Daniel Miller in his book As If They Were Asleep. Which happens to be the book that Nora was reading when she had her turn. Which means that Nora's preoccupation with the past does indeed figure into the present. It turns out Nora was there at Halcyon. She gave birth to Jess's mother Polly on Christmas Eve as her family lay dead. But why Nora's obsession? Could she have known something, some secret, that she's been holding on to all her life? And could Daniel Miller have the answers? He conducted extensive interviews with Nora. Did she confess something? And can Jess help lift the guilt from her grandmother's shoulders before it's too late?
If you're a fan of Kate Morton, you know you don't read her for the mysteries. You read her for the atmosphere; the old wallpaper crumbling in a stately manor, the creak of an old floorboard that the house's inhabitants have long grown accustomed to, the sense of elegant decay. This is what Kate Morton books are about and thankfully, after a misstep with , she is back in fine fettle, once again delving into the darkest secrets that Ancestry.com doesn't document. Family secrets that not even the family are aware of. These mysteries pepper all of Kate Morton's books, and sadly, are often easily solved. As I stated previously, you don't read her books for the mysteries. Which, ironically, would be doing this book a disservice, because for the first time I think the mystery steals the show. We have what amounts to a more deadly version of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, an unsolved case she has taken inspiration from before, and we see it played out through dual timelines. But what I feel really sets Homecoming apart are two things, Daniel's Miller's book and her sticking to the Golden Age rule of fair play. Miller's book within the book, As If They Were Asleep, reads as just a wonderful gripping true crime story. It has such a unique and different voice and tone to Morton's usual work that it actually feels like it could conceivably exist and therefore the tragedy in Tambilla is given a greater weight. You actually feel as if this isn't a fictional story that Kate Morton has created for her dedicated readers, but that she stumbled on a real case and a real book and wove this narrative around it. Of course, this isn't the case, but it really feels like it is and that makes this book special. This makes the book something more, something unique, especially among her bibliography. The other thing that sets this apart is that she followed the Golden Age rule of fair play. The rule states that the reader has to be given all the information that they need in order to solve the crime. The author can't pull some weird Josephine Tey bullshit wherein there was no way in which the reader could conceivably solve the case. Ronald Knox codified this in his ten rules which, really, if you want a good laugh to see how badly some of them have aged. Also, he really didn't like secret passages. He would have hated the movie Clue. Therefore we could never have been friends. In fairness to Morton, I don't think she's ever played dirty, but here the way she draws out the information leaves you guessing until almost the very end when all the pieces click into place. It was masterfully done. Also, seriously, wicked vengeance. I approve. I can't wait to see where her writing goes next. Now to just sit here for her next book, which if it follows her average three year gap would mean a new book next year... Though it could be at least five. Here's hoping it's not more....more
**spoiler alert** *Special Content only on my blog, during Going Gothic (March 2023)
Casey Fletcher started drinking th**spoiler alert** *Special Content only on my blog, during Going Gothic (March 2023)
Casey Fletcher started drinking the day her husband drowned in Lake Greene. But her grief has become so all encompassing that it's destroying her life. For awhile she had her drinking under control and then she didn't. Passing out cold in the play she was staring in on Broadway and having to be dragged offstage while unconscious by her costars was literally her career vanishing down the bottle. Her mother swooped in and banished Casey to the Lake House in Vermont. The house where Casey spent the last happy moments of her life before it all went to hell. Now her mother and her cousin call daily to check in. Her acting skills are put to the test by declaring she's not drinking because of course she is. Her neighbor Eli is supplying her with the booze her mother had hoped to deny her. The lake is as deserted as it always is this late in the year. There are only five houses on Lake Greene. The Fitzgeralds have already left for the season, Eli is always there, and handyman Boone is working on the A-Frame next door. Which leaves the glass house directly across from Casey. And the inhabitants of that house are about to throw a wrench in Casey's plan to drink herself into oblivion. Casey sees someone drowning out on the lake and rushes into action and saves her new neighbor Katherine Royce. Like Katherine knows who Casey is, Casey knows who Katherine is, the supermodel turned philanthropist who's married to tech guru Tom Royce. The girl who had the billboard in Time Square that captivated the world and Casey. They are the owners of the glass house. That night Tom and Katherine come across the lake to thank Casey and since Eli is already over they take the party outside and Eli gets to telling ghost stories around a fire. The evening is cut short when Katherine passes out. She and her husband return home but Casey is worried about Katherine and gets out her husband's binoculars. Watching the Royces becomes her new obsession. One that might prove deadly when Katherine disappears.
The House Across the Lake marks a turning point for Riley Sager. In his previous books that have hauntings or other paranormal phenomenon he meticulously pulls back the curtain to prove that it was humans all along, just an old man under a mask solved thanks to Scooby and the gang. Here he does not. And I love it. I was a little sad when the was a revenge well plotted. As for the being at the feet of the elite, well, couldn't I have had just a hint of the real horrors of Rosemary's Baby? As for , it was sadly human horrors. The genius in making the paranormal real in this specific book is that Riley Sager is doing a spot on pastiche to the Gillian Flynn genre that was so lovingly and accurately skewered by Kristen Bell's The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. There's a predictability to this genre that relies on copious amounts of alcohol and unreliable narrators and Riley Sager does a good job leaning into these tropes with Carrie Fisher, I mean Casey Fletcher, as his protagonist. Husbands, neighbors, everyone is a suspect when her neighbor disappears. Yet what is really happening goes back to a ghost story that Eli told around Casey's fire pit. It's a moment that is almost a blink and you'll miss it moment. There are so many other elements at play in that scene that what Eli has to say gets lost in the kerfuffle. In fact, I was so busy putting together the other parts of the jigsaw I lost sight of the bigger picture so that it was a nice surprise to realize the kind of book I thought I was reading wasn't what I was reading at all. As a reader it's really wonderful when your expectations are proved wrong. When a book turns out not to be what you expected, but better. While Riley Sager is a must buy author for me after this twist I can't wait to see what he writes next....more
Elizabeth (Miss Eliza)
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