I was hoping for either a clever, witty, romp of a mystery or the kind of slow-burn intelligent story that makes me read on to see where it goes. Unfortunately, I never really got either.

Lenox is dull. I hate saying that, I hate feeling that, but he is. He does not manage to ever make me care about him. I really want to. When he starts the book wanting to do nothing but sit by the fire with a book, I felt an instant connection there. Obviously, we were going to be great book friends and this was going to be a joy to read.

It is not.

It is a trudge through a mystery that gets solved oddly early (though not quite early enough, given apparently Lenox is good at this and I am not and I managed to figure it out before he did) and then the book plods along afterward for what feels like a remarkably long time. Part of this is the writing, or perhaps Lenox himself if I'm feeling charitable. It is rambling (hopefully this review is not also rambling, but I feel I can't promise that at this point) and repetitious. Entire pages go by with the same information being conveyed to the reader three different ways. None of it is plot-relevant, and much of it is about the weather.

While Lenox is often called in on cases, I get the idea that he solves many of them through sheer dumb luck. He does pick out some clever things that were missed, admittedly, but he also misses several things that should be glaringly obvious and manages to act like a complete idiot whenever he attempts to interrogate anyone.

In addition to Lenox, we have a crop of other two-dimensional characters that...I don't want to say "populate" because that gives them more life than they really have, but reside in the London explored in this book. Lady Jane is her own special brand of insipid, with bonus points for her being apparently perfect in every way. We never see this, of course, except that she is oddly very kind to Lenox (though perish the thought that they are romantically involved!).

I will not get into the historical oddities present. I'm generally willing to let them slide in historical fiction, honestly, and I'm also more likely to catch them given my history background (which is probably why I'm willing to let them slide, honestly--otherwise I'd have a horrid time reading anything). Suffice it to say that if you are reading this for a valid history lesson or for appropriate language, please find something else instead.

It took me ages to get through this not because I set it aside (I do that all the time) but because it was a slow trek while actively reading it. I was bored. I didn't particularly care about the mystery. I didn't care about the characters. I have a horrible feeling that at some point in the series (this is apparently a series) Lenox and Lady Jane are going to have a slow, boring courtship and I am going to die of ennui while reading it if I dared continue.

This book was provided to me for free via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was hoping for a bit more here.

Most of it wasn't truly terrible, but the writing was oddly basic (quick, short sentences, often starting with the same word but without ever managing a rhythm) and the scares just weren't there. I was occasionally horrified, but never scared. It just wasn't creepy, for a collection of stories that centered around a graveyard and ghosts and dead people and murderers.

I've certainly let that sort of thing go before, though. If the storyline is interesting enough and the characters are intriguing enough, I don't need to be scared, even when scares were promised.

The problem here, though, is that this is a bit of a mess in regards to that. The characters were never really more than lightly drawn. I could tell I was supposed to feel something for them, but I didn't quite manage it because they weren't quite real for me. Their actions and reactions appeared to have no logic behind them, even the logic existent in someone insane (and many of these characters were certainly insane as we understand it).

Each individual story connects to the whole, but stands alone as a story as well. The problem is that they are all just a little cliché. We have a murderer, we have a sad, abused wife, we have a crazy reporter (and am I the only one who was not quite sure what I was supposed to take from the end of that story?), we have a crazy guy. Each story starts and ends without really resolving anything. I don't feel like I have the background that might have been intriguing, since something weird is going on in the background. I don't feel like the stories themselves are really interesting. They feel pretty basic, and I know going in how they are going to end without actually being excited to get there.

And the poetry. Now, I fully admit I'm not a fan of poetry. I'm just not. I never really have been, and it takes an awful lot to make me appreciate it. This is not something I am ever going to appreciate. It reads like the sort of stuff a friend of mine (and probably a friend of everyone who is reading this, because everyone has that friend) attempted to write in high school--attempts at gothic romance/horror with a focus on death and a simple rhyming scheme. It pops up at random intervals and just makes me miserable until it goes away again. There are also bits and pieces of more established poets, which is probably supposed to lend the book a poetic air but just makes the rest of the poetry look worse in comparison.

I was hoping for some quick scares and some interesting, creepy backstory. I get the feeling that there is something interesting going on here, somewhere, but that was not what I got to read, and what I did read was not enjoyable enough to make up for that loss.

This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I think I was expecting these stories to read more like The Lottery, which I read in school and quite enjoyed.

Unfortunately, they didn't, or at least not in the same way I had hoped. They shared a rather gloomy outlook on life with The Lottery, certainly, but that was kind of the defining factor. I didn't see the sparkle I had felt a touch of in The Lottery and seen quite a bit of in the only novel of hers I have read, The Haunting of Hill House. These plodded a bit, and I always felt like I knew what the ending was going to be, even if I didn't know the specifics: it would be depressing.

Most of the stories are significantly less speculative fiction than the previous things of hers I have read, which I found disappointing. The woman can write, certainly, but I was not enjoying most of what I was reading, despite that.

There is a particular kind of depressing story I associate with American writers. It is not really dark, it doesn't have villains, it's a kind of "life sucks and then you die" mentality that I felt overloaded by when actually taking an American Literature class, and this book brought me back to that, back to reading Ethan Frome and wondering why we couldn't do British Literature instead.

Most of these stories, well-written or not, were not at all my cup of tea, and I think I will stick with her horror exclusively from now on. If you enjoy the type of depressing I'm talking about or just want to see what else she wrote and are not interested in more traditional horror, this might be right up your alley.

The synopsis on this was amazing and sounded like a lovely mix-up of fairy tales and fun, so much so that I couldn't wait to dive right in. I was moving right along, quite enjoying this, until I started getting weirded out by the kind of ridiculous amount of guns and the sheer zaniness of having this many fairy tales wrapped together and warped so much. I was about forty percent in when I felt like it started to kind of fall apart.

Alice herself felt very much like the character grown up some should be. She remained a little loopy and a little silly. Wonderland made very little sense in its natural form, which was appropriate. My problem with Alice, however, is the sheer amount of time we spend with her without ever really getting to know her. I don't like her. I don't dislike her. I could not tell you almost anything about her even by the end of the book. She never felt like she grew, or even like she was fully fleshed-out. Retelling a story, especially when large chunks of things are being wildly changed, is not an excuse not to let the reader get to know the character, even when Alice at seven and Alice at seventeen are practically the same person in terms of maturity.

The rest of the characters certainly had interesting backstories, and my favorite part of the book was definitely seeing what twisted form each story was going to take. I didn't like all of the ones I would have expected, and I didn't dislike all of the ones I would have expected, either. This definitely had a very different slant.

The problem, however, was it felt like too much wrapped in a small package. The ideas were not bad at all, but throwing all of it together kind of made a mess and left me never able to really get to know any of the characters or handle any of the revelations properly. Again, I felt like things were not fleshed out nearly as much as they should have been to maintain my interest, and we were jumping from odd situation to odder situation so quickly there was no time for me to really care about anyone.

The sheer number of guns and gun talk in this story was kind of insane. I was not expecting it, and I was not expecting weirdly specific explanations of how to fire a gun and how important they are for defense. It felt out of place (even in a story that is kind of about being out of place and full of very out of place characters) and weirdly preachy, honestly. Perhaps it was supposed to be suggestive of something wrong on Wonderland's part (and it did succeed in that), but the heroes were a bit gung-ho about the importance as well, and that just felt off.

The ending sort of just...happened, as well. The wrap-up was not terribly well-handled, and I'm not fully certain it really made sense that it was accepted the way it was.

In the end, I was kind of hoping for this to end, which is a shame because it had serious potential. Much as I hate the idea of the stand-alone novel being overshadowed completely by trilogies or quartets or even more, as things seem to be going lately, this is something that may very well have benefitted from the extra room to handle plot and characterization. It might have been enough to turn it from "okay" into at least "good" or perhaps even "great".

This book was provided to me for free via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The entirety of this book is remarkably unsettling.

This is a psychological thriller with the emphasis on psychological. Every bit of the writing, the characterization, even the setting suits the mood of the story. It is cold and bleak. Rooting for main character Marta becomes remarkably easy very early on, given how isolated she is, but trusting her completely never feels quite right. She probably isn't crazy, except she certainly acts that way sometimes. And it is hard to believe that what her husband is telling her is true, except that isn't anything else even more ridiculous?

One of the main reasons I enjoyed this is because things are not handed to you too quickly. Figuring out what is going on is a tricky business, and it's hard to make a clear judgement call. Are Marta's pills confusing her, or is being off the pills confusing her? What on earth is actually going on?

Many of the other characters are not terribly likeable, though that in itself is part of the dark charm of this. How much leeway does one give Marta for simply appearing, as the narrator, more likeable than those surrounding her?

There probably end up being more questions than answers in this, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion. There are fewer sudden and shocking surprises in this than in the big-name psychological thrillers from the last few years, but none of them manages to maintain this atmosphere. It's more reminiscent of The Yellow Wallpaper than anything else, although I won't argue it is quite on that level. It is an intriguing story, though, and well worth the read.

So, er, this book happened.

I'm having a lot of trouble responding to it, honestly. I almost don't want to three star it, because I'm just not sure "liked" is the appropriate word for it. It was well-done, for what it was. What it was was dark as hell, though. Seriously, horrifically dark as hell.

I read it almost completely in one go, straight through, like watching a car accident happening in front of you from start to finish, unable to tear your eyes away and feeling horrified both by what you are seeing and by your inability to stop yourself from watching it.

There was a moment where I was so completely horrified that I had to put it down and play Settlers of Catan for awhile because I just....couldn't handle it. I needed to not have certain images in my head. I'm actually still not comfortable thinking about that part of the book. I think it might end up being one of those things that haunts me forever and pops up randomly when I'm feeling miserable.

I completely understand why this book was controversial. There are actual several reasons for it, though I have a bad feeling that one of the biggest is actually the least horrifying thing about this book:

the fact that the main character is revealed to be transgender at the end.

Given everything else that happens, that should not be even a blip on the radar, but I can almost bet if I poked around a bit I would discover that it caused quite a ruckus.

I think I'm glad I read this book, if only because it is one of those books that is on all of those lists, one of those books that it feels like everyone has read but you. I'm not sure I know anyone I would actually recommend this to, however: I rather like my friends and family and try not to put them in situations in which throwing up while reading is an appropriate response.

This is a horribly rambling review, for which I am apologetic, but honestly putting my thoughts together at all is a hardship after reading this. The man can write, I will absolutely give him that, but I'm rather left wanting to scrub out my head and perhaps read something light and fluffy. Pet Sematary, perhaps. I can't think of anything that would not feel light and fluffy after this. Take that as condemnation or recommendation as you will.