natreviews's Reviews (445)

So if you liked The Crucible or The VVitch, you'll probably want to check this one out. It's a New England Folktale that focuses on a woman who, after her husband dies, just wants to take care of herself and her things. Oh ya, there's also a goatman and some forest folk to join the ride.

To me, this book was enjoyable, but predictable. You could pretty much tell what Abitha's story was going to be after every chapter. I also didn't find it all that gruesome, as if you know of the US Witch Trails, you know the methods that were used to "prove" and convict witches. The highlight is the artwork found in the middle of the book. It's very cool. 

Do I regret reading it? No. Would I ever read it again, probably not.

This is an excellent book if you want to learn about human cadavers or are interested in becoming one. If you know the history of cadavers (body snatchers, etc.) then the first couple of chapters may be a bore, but it really picks up from there. The tone is also pretty light considering the subject matter. Mary keeps a nice balance between serious, informative, and funny.

This book was written in 2003, so it'd be interesting to see how much science and the technology/techniques mentioned in this book have changed over the almost 20 years since this was published.

I will be reading more Mary Roach as her books seem fun and informative (there's even one about when animals break the law)!

This is a gruesome and amazing read. You can tell that love was put into all of the details, from the benign to the gruesome. 

I will say I figured out the twist with Abbey probably half way through the book (once THAT scene happened), but holy shit it was still good. The way you start out feeling sad for the main character and gradually feel disgusted by her is such a force and credit to how well written this story is. I'll probably check out more books by this author, but this novel isn't for the faint of heart.

I don't think I can say anything that hasn't been already said. This book is a hard read in general, but also is a hard read for fans of her career. I grew up watching iCarly, so of course I know her as her role on the show. It makes me sick knowing just a portion of what she went through, from her early years to now. 

I will say this is a story that is inspiring to anyone whose had to deal with trauma. By the end of the book, you feel hopeful that Jennette can finally live her own life. Side note: how the hell did no other adult in the house notice the abuse going on? Like, how did these kids not end up in CPS at some point (it is mentioned that a neighbor did call CPS once, but other than that there is no mention of external intervention). The abuse in that household was staggering (and that's only from what was included in the novel, there was probably more going on that wasn't mentioned) and it's just really sad what she, her brothers, and everyone in that house had to go through.

Okay, I really liked this book. To be honest, part of you can understand why/how Suzy is Suzy. It's a hard read at parts, but nothing too crazy if you are a fan of the true crime genre (you'd have heard it all). It was really well written (apart from the odd spelling/grammar error) and was a good first outing for Kolesnik. I'm excited to keep track of her career and see what she writes next.

I found this book to be okay. The author took many liberties with the known facts of what happened with the Donner Party, and the supernatural twist in this one wasn't super developed. It was more inserted to make it supernatural instead of taking the horror of the real life tale and running with that. 

I found the writing to be of the New Adult leaning Young Adult type. So it's written sort of in the way a young adult novel would be written, but a bit more mature (not enough to be classified as adult). It's not my favourite writing style, so no surprise I didn't really like it.

This book has good potential, but just misses the mark.

So a serial killer writing a self-help book. An interesting concept that could have gone really bad, but didn't (well, not in the quality department at least). What's really interesting is that this book does exhibit your typical serial killer traits; obsessing, harming animals as a child, planning, etc.

As a quick warning: other than the obvious, the R slur does get dropped quite a bit within the last 30-40 pages of this book. Just a heads up for you people who'd rather not read that word if they can help it.

While reading I couldn't help thinking how Joe from You would absolutely have read this book and took pointers from it.

This anthology reminds me a lot of the show Love, Death and Robots. If you've never seen it, the show is an anthology of short films, having to do with at least one element of the title (so it either has the themes of Love, Death, and/or Robots in it). Like that show, some are better than others.

In this anthology, all of the stories have to do with being queer and fear. The majority of the stories does include descriptive sex, so if that's not your style you might want to stay away from this book.

My favourite stories of this collection are Homeland, In Circles, Crabby, Shark, and Here Lies the Last Lesbian Rental in East Vancouver.  I'm keeping these books because of those stories.

I had wanted to read this book after finishing my ABC challenge for this year. I am glad I did.

You can tell Dan Simmons did a lot, and I mean A LOT, of research for this story (as I'm told he does for all of his historical fiction books). He researched the very real lost expedition of Sir John Franklin and of the Indigenous people of Greenland and Canada (as some mythologies in the last third of the book comes from the Greenland Inuit people). He blends the historical and the supernatural very well.

He also got a lot of the details found from the expedition right. For those of you who don't know, after the ship went missing there were rescue expeditions which found items from the ship and evidence of the remaining crew escaping. I recommend reading this article for more information: https://allthatsinteresting.com/hms-terror

The only things he got wrong were things he couldn't have known. Parts of the last chapter

when Crozier goes back and lights HMS Terror on fire, sinking the ship

couldn't have happened, as the

HMS Terror

was discovered fully intact and having no outside reason to sink. This book was published in 2007, HMS Terror was found in 2014, and HMS Erebus was found in 2016.

I will say it's a very long read, but the last two chapters make up for how slow it goes in the second half. The second half makes up how slow it goes in the first half, and well the first half sets up the story that takes place later on in the book.  

So we're on the eve of the season finale! Lots happened this season, and I know I'll have to go back and re-read all of this seasons episodes in one sitting to get the complete story, but I'm so excited to see where the season goes in season 3!