5 stars! A great collection of stories both dark and gripping. Sonora Taylor has a way of writing that pulls you in and it seems effortless - but her words are definitely chosen carefully. I had to stop myself from tearing through this in one day because I wanted to allow myself time to absorb and fully feel the effects of the poems, short stories, and flash fiction. I am glad I chose to savor this over a few days instead because it gave me something to look forward to each day and also gave me a guarantee to be in my happy place because I knew that whatever I read would be great. Highly recommended!

5 stars! Full review to come

Possession/haunting stories are a top 5 trope for me. I can just gobble them up and I am always ready for more. With that being said, a lot of possession books tend to be similar. But for me that is okay because I am already expecting it - if that makes sense. With The Possession of Natalie Glasgow, author Hailey Piper tosses an entirely new type of story at us. It is not your typical possession story. The story begins right in the middle of the chaos. A mother is smoking near the window while an outsider has been called in to help her daughter who has been displaying wild, mysterious behaviors lately. But then the story starts to go down another path, one that I did not see coming at all.

Piper was able to hook me immediately and kept me entertained and engrossed the entire length of the novella. At just around 100 pages, this is a quick read. But it is packed full of all the qualities that make a book binge-worthy. This one gets 4 stars from me and I may not be eating meat for a few days...

Fans of horror with a touch of urban legend will enjoy this novella. I do not know if The Ladderman is a real tale or not, but I would place him up there with Candyman and Bloody Mary in terms of being able to scare, threaten, and cause harm!

The opening chapter pulls us right in on a stormy night and a frantic woman. And nothing will slow down from that moment until the final pages of the story. There are some really cool and unique death scenes in this one - some that I would not even wish on my worst enemies!

All in all, I think this is a great story packed with chilling horror. I definitely want more from Angela Archer. 4.5 stars and rounded up for Goodreads!

Just hearing the name Christine can take most people back to the 80s... it will take them back to when Stephen King was captivating the world. He had already released works like Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, Dead Zone, Night Shift, Cujo, etc. His name was becoming synonymous with horror. So what does he decide to do with Christine? Well, he makes a "haunted car," of course! But, like with most of King's stories, there's so much more beneath the surface.

Christine explores friendship (or most aptly the dissolution of friendship as we grow up), parental control (and how some parents are just not ready to let their kids become adults), and first love. In Christine we see a boy's first love with a woman and with a car. It sounds a little silly to me personally because I was never a car person. But I can understand the sentiment here especially with this being the 80s and our "freedom" was somewhat tied to that license and getting behind the steering wheel. Now it seems that "freedom" comes when parents finally get their kids a smart phone, but that's neither here nor there.

I really loved the characters in this story. Arnie ad Dennis seem like they had such a great friendship... most of which we only know about due to the storytelling from Dennis since we get thrown right into the story when Arnie meets Christine and we don't get a lot of the groundwork prior. Both boys complement each other and Dennis defends Arnie when he has to against bullies and his parents. But everything starts to change once Arnie sees and buys Christine...

Christine is just... wow... what a character! The scenes in which Christine takes over are amazing and it's crazy how intrigued and engaged I became while imagining the car revving up and running people down. Christine has a history - mysterious deaths have been surrounding for as far back as we are told. Anyone who comes in contact becomes a victim of the '58 Plymouth Fury in one way or another. And for Arnie, we see him completely fade away and totally turn into someone else while alienating everyone around him. His transformation is quite remarkable and I couldn't stop from learning more.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story... and I enjoyed it even more because I never thought I could read 700+ pages about a car. Again, I am not a car person! My biggest issue with the book is why the sudden switch in POV from Part 1 to Part 2 and then back to the original narrator in Part 3. It did not really make sense to me and it almost pulled me out of the book completely. But I hung in there for Part 2 because a LOT of action takes place there and Christine really gets herself going, too. 4 stars from me!

Sidenote on book vs movie: I really enjoy the movie, but I am not a fan of how Carpenter took it that the car was made evil and totally removed the Lebay possession/haunting aspect of everything.

Sidenote on LeBay: Do you think he really was a changeling and not the real guy at this point?
Could he be linked to Mid-World and thus connecting this to The Dark Tower series? Random thoughts!

Was a 3.5 until the last 40 pages or so totally flipped it up to that 4. Full review to come!

Slasher Crasher was described to me as Mean Girls meets Scream. I love both of those! I love the witty, teen dramedy of Mean Girls and of course I am obsessed with all things slashery and all things Scream!

I enjoyed the plot of the story - the drama between two former besties on Halloween day and how everything unfolds. The book is told from multiple POVs throughout the day and we get a timestamp as the day and book proceed.

A few things kept pulling me OUT of the story though. I swear like a sailor - I enjoy my dirty words. But I read the F word about 20 times in just 30 seconds sometimes. It seemed cuss words were just thrown into every other sentence, thought, dialogue, etc. It was just too much and did not add value to me. I also didn't enjoy that most of the book had people calling each other things like "fat b*tch, silly f*g, etc etc." While I understand the intent of all the fatphobia and homophobia, it was just too much and didn't seem entirely realistic. I was on the receiving end of many gay slurs and insults growing up, but based on this book you would think that 110% of my life was nothing but people calling me queer. I just couldn't connect to that element and it seemed overdone for a fictional story. It did not allow me to actually like any character or feel sorry for them when they all acted this way. And there were just entirely too many fart jokes and fart references for me.

But if I reflect back and get beyond all the superfluous derogatory comments and language that seriously took up way more space on the page than they should have, I still enjoyed the overall plot of the book. 3 stars!

So good! 5 stars and full review to come!

I can't even tell you how long this book has been on my TBR and how much I am in love with the cover. Sadly, all the good things end there as I forced myself to not DNF this. It was an easy read so I didn't think a DNF would be necessary but... nothing ever really happened. The cover is beyond misleading. And. Ugh. I just hoped to really be obsessed with this one after I finished it and could recommend it to all my friends who have been waiting to hear about it. Sorry, guys. 1.5-2 stars for me.

I wanted to read this after seeing the movie last year. But this is a limited example of when the movie is actually better. The movie is full of amazing Dolly Parton songs, not SO focused on boys/dating, and it has some great acting by Danielle Macdonald as Willowdean (who also did a fabulous job in Unbelievable). The book was just too boycrazy for me and sadly didn't work for more as well as the on-screen adaptation. 3 stars.