drakaina16's Reviews (2.21k)

Thank you to D&T Publishing for providing a review copy. 
4.25 stars. This is my second Robert Essig book and he can definitely write a great story. Secret Basements is fairly slow-paced, taking its time building up tension and dread (and a serious dislike of Uncle Charlie). Towards the end, things develop quite quickly. I devoured the book in two sittings and enjoyed it very much.

Thank you to the author for providing a review copy. 
This is a great grimdark fantasy! I am a huge fan of Nightbreed, and I think Kelvin did a great job with this homage. It retains the feel of a Nightbreed story, while managing to be its own thing entirely. I look forward to reading more about the people of Golan. 

Thank you to Cemetery Dance for providing a review copy. 
4.5 stars, rounded up. Something sinister is going on at the DMV, and a group of people are about to find out just how insidious it is. This book is excellent satire, but it's played extremely straight. Sometimes that doesn't work in satire, but it absolutely does in DMV. Bentley Little manages to make the DMV even more creepy and unpleasant than it already is - quite an accomplishment.

This is an extremely solid collection of stories by Joshua Rex. Only the first story fell kind of flat for me; I enjoyed the others. This is a great first effort by the author and I look forward to reading more from him in the future. 

The Leap ⭐⭐
Breakout Season ⭐⭐⭐
The Unfinished Room ⭐⭐⭐⭐
What's Coming For You ⭐⭐⭐.5
A Mother's Museum ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Coattails ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Whispering Wheel ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Reveal ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
In Situ ⭐⭐⭐
The Voice Below ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Judith's Prophecy was a lot of fun! These are the kind of vampires I prefer to read about - gross, blood-sucking predators. This book reads like an action movie, but doesn't skimp on good characters or interesting plot. I'm eager to see where the story is going in the next two books. 

Whew, this book is a gut-punch from start to finish. Bleak and heart-wrenching as it is, it was also very well-written with great characterization. And man, that ending. This is my first Jonathan Butcher book, but it definitely won't be the last.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for providing a review copy.

I discovered V. Castro last year when I read The Queen of the Cicadas. I quickly devoured everything she has written previously, and loved them all. As much as I loved Queen, The Haunting of Alejandra has overtaken its number one spot. 

Oh, this book. Without getting too personal, I recently left a relationship that in many ways resembled the relationship between Alejandra and her husband. While it's a book about a haunting, it's also about the myriad of domestic barbs and abuse that occur in Alejandra's day to day life. Seeing Alejandra begin to take her power back was so encouraging. 

This book is unafraid to talk about the sometimes ugly parts of motherhood. Loving your child more than anything else in the world, but still wanting to die. Having someone touching you constantly, but still feeling agonizingly lonely. Feeling constantly overwhelmed and underappreciated. I didn't know how much I could relate to Alejandra, didn't know how badly I needed this book. It helped heal a part of me I didn't realize was so badly twisted. 5 stars. 

I wanted to really love this book, and I didn't right up until the last 15% or so. What's not to love? Cults, a shady corporation, a book that is part horror, part sci-fi, part crime thriller. Everything worked wonderfully. Until the end. There are so many loose ends left untied and the book ended so quickly it made my head spin. I was prepared to give it 5 stars, but the ending knocked it down to 3.5, rounded up.

Wow! John Durgin is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. The Cursed Among Us was one of the best books I read last year, and I have no doubt that Inside the Devil's Nest will be very high on the list this year. Part family drama, part mob drama, and part supernatural thriller, the book manages to pull all of this off quite successfully. Throw in a cult, some shady real estate deals, and a pond with something very wrong living inside it, and it all adds up to a very heady brew. 

This is my first experience with Glen Hirschberg, even though I've owned The Janus Tree for awhile. The prose is so very beautiful. There were passages I read over and over again because they were just so lovely. I think I'll need to read The Janus Tree sooner than later. 

Black Leg ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Devil ⭐⭐⭐
Jetty Sara ⭐⭐⭐.5
Slough ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Destination Land ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A Paradise to Live In or See ⭐⭐⭐
Tell Me When I Disappear ⭐⭐⭐