Used for the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge category of a book in which every point-of-view character is a person of color, though I originally intended for it to be my short story collection written by a woman. I expected my feelings about this book to be tepid because I have long identified as one of those readers who dislike short stories. But ZZ Packer creates rich characters and wonderful dialogue that drew me in, and her ambiguous endings somehow felt not disappointing, but relentlessly authentic. My favorites were "Brownies," "Our Lady of Peace," "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," and "Doris Is Coming."

Objectively speaking, is this a 5-star book? Perhaps not. However...

- I love Irish folklore, especially faeries.
- I love the Irish language.
- I love the rest of this series.
- I’ve spent three books wondering if Mrs. Kincaid even had a first name, and this book is entirely about her!

So this book definitely worked for me. Even though it needed more thorough copy-editing, and even though the dialogue often reads like a history lesson. I know there are faults, but I simply do not care about them. 5 stars.

This was my introduction to Dean Koontz, and it was a wild ride. I went into it pretty blind, knowing only that it uses a home invasion as the catalyst for its plot. The reading experience felt like watching a horror movie in a theater, all darkness and tense music and the unrelenting urge to scream at the heroine on-screen. There are shades of Don’t Breathe and even Jeepers Creepers—though there’s nothing supernatural at play—here, and I did scream at my Kindle more than once. There were times when I wasn’t sure whether I liked this book or not. But I never considered leaving it unread. I had to know what happened.

In Edgler Vess (names in this book aren’t great), Koontz creates a villain who is genuinely scary, if unfortunately prone to quoting the title of the book in a way that made me imagine him leering through the fourth wall. But what struck me about him, about this book, that makes it so different from today’s thrillers, is that he is strictly a villain. Though Koontz takes pains to show how seamlessly Vess integrates into society, he doesn’t make him sympathetic. He doesn’t take the antihero route. You never falter in rooting for the heroine, Chyna (not the late pro wrestler... I told you the names in this book are pretty bad).

In that way, Vess never turns into a wry commentary on society. Koontz doesn’t hint that any of us could be Vess in secret, or that all of us partially are, and while the book’s scares do rely somewhat on the idea that we could encounter a Vess, so too does it rely on the triumph of good over evil. It’s the most optimistic thriller I’ve ever read.

Is that a naïve flaw? Or does it suggest that the world has gotten much darker, readers much more pessimistic (and perhaps nihilistic) since 1995? (I would say probably so, but I was 7 at the time, so most things were rosier and less complicated for me then.)

Either way, I don’t regret deciding to try Dean Koontz, and I’ll probably read more of his books.

I thought that this would be something along the lines of The Girl on the Train, but it turned out to be a much darker character study of a disturbed woman whose problems extend well past her obsession with a famous neighbor. A brilliantly-executed unreliable narrator whose use of the occasional exclamation point was enough to chill me. While away a creepy afternoon with this one; you won’t be able to stop reading.

The unlikeable-female-protagonist domestic noir that I love with a spike of Lynchian surreality. Tightly plotted with poetically economical use of language, this one hooked me with the somewhat familiar premise of a woman who has not lived up to her potential, but it took her (and me) to unexpected places. I finished it unsure of what is real, and unsure of whether that even matters.

I read this book for THE TWIST, which is all anyone who reads this book can talk about. It turns out that there is a DOUBLE TWIST, which I enjoyed because I figured out the first one and spent the last 70 or so pages reading frantically to see if I was right.

Overall, this is dark fluff, a consummate page-turner that thoroughly distracted me for the weekend with its blend of domestic noir and horror. If you love reading about assholes keeping secrets and ruining each other’s lives, you want to blow through a book really quickly, and you want to meet a character who would be Amy Dunne’s BFF, Behind Her Eyes is for you.

A solid, creepy suspense novel that interrogates the possibility of unconditional love under unusually trying circumstances. Namely: Would you be able to still love your seven-year-old daughter if she came at you with a hammer? Should you?

Baby Teeth isn’t perfect, but it was a fun reading experience. I spent a lot of time ranting about the characters, feeling genuine rage at their actions and poor decisions. I love the catharsis of screaming at a book, and Baby Teeth made damn sure that I got to do that.

I knocked off one star primarily due to qualms I have with the second act. There’s a red herring that I wish had been explored more, because it would have taken this book to darker places and would have set up so much more tension between two of the characters. As it is, the book just seems temporarily unsure about which characters the reader should consider worthy of empathy. I understand the introduction of this moral ambiguity, but it sacrifices some of the plot’s momentum and leads to an ending that could have packed more of a wallop than it does.

I guess this is me saying that I wish Baby Teeth were a less restrained book than it is, whatever that implies about me. I’ll be eagerly anticipating Zoje Stage’s future books to see if she really Goes There.