ryinwonderland's Reviews (892)

Ash is perfect. Maybe too perfect? She bakes the most delicious cupcakes you’ve ever tasted. She makes her own soap. She lives in a farm that’s out of a fairy tale. But there’s more to Ash than meets the eye. 

She’s also full of red flags that Ro keeps trying to ignore in the name of love. Like how Ash is controlling and has boundaries that are more like huge brick walls and she’s manipulative and can be kind of scary…but then she smiles and says something sweet and her kisses are so tender and…well, Ro can be good for Ash right?

help trapped by serial killer

As with all Catriona Ward books, I never knew if I actually had my footing. I trusted no one’s perspective, rightfully so, and when the magic was introduced I knew that any slight grip I had on understanding was lost. That being said, I really enjoyed this book. I don’t think I fully get how it ended, but if what I think happened did happen, it’s awesome. It’s sort of like a book within a book (within a book? I lost count) and all of the characters are deeply traumatized and fucked up and everyone needs therapy. 

bitches will literally trap their friends and enemies in books rather than go to therapy

If you like Catriona’s other books, this is more of that. Slightly fewer horrible things happening to children, at least! 

Final review to come. 
A book of novellas in Samhattan. A serial Killer who never acted on his impulses, a man who free falls from Jupiter to escape his guilt, a horrible couple confronted by their past while stuck in a cleaning machine, and two brothers haunting the despicable hateful old man who murdered their third brother - that one has Christmas Carol vibes of Scrooge was a murderer. 

SEQUEL NOW PLEASE
Modern day Arthurian tale with zombies and magic and death and found family and so many emotions and enemies to lovers and heartbreak and a cliff hanger

It’s not easy being the black sheep of your family. Especially when your family is made of religious extremists. Rachel Harrison has gifted us a wicked novel about toxic family dynamics and the pressures of finding your path in life. 

This book is devilishly fun. It’s for everyone who was raised by narcissists, for everyone with toxic family members, for everyone with religious trauma, for every black sheep. 

Reading this book felt like watching Eddie Munson shred Metallica in the Upside Down. BLACK SHEEP rocks.  

Clay McLeod Chapman got me haunted with Ghost Eaters, and has me crawling out of my skin with What Kind of Mother. 

A gorgeous and heartbreaking southern gothic folk tale about the horrors of parenting and love gone too far.
What Kind of Mother is drenched with love, with loss, with the screaming ache of a parent’s worst nightmare, and then…can it be? A wish granted. But reader, be careful what you wish for.

This book lures you in with false hopes and a gentle tide, and then flips your boat and drags you to the bottom of the river where the crabs are waiting to feast. 

Give me your hand and come with me into the murky depths of this horrifically beautiful novel. 

Level 1 on the steam scale (smooches at the end).

Michael, if you’re reading this…I would never.

Now that’s out of the way, allow me to introduce you to the delightfully dark comedy, Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide Vol. 1. 

After he tries and fails to murder his horrible boss, Cliff Iverson is recruited to The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts. This is, of course, the very fancy, well-rounded school for learning the art of homicide. Here, Cliff is educated in all manner and methods of deletion (read: murder) so that he may rid the world of his boss, this time successfully. 

There are four questions that a potential deletist (murderer) must answer: 

1. Is this murder necessary?
2. Have you given your target every last chance to redeem themselves?
3. What innocent person might suffer by your actions?
4. Will this deletion improve the life of others? 

If the deletist can answer enquiries #1,# 2, and #4 in the affirmative and #3 with “none”, then they may move on to the next phase of actually learning and mastering the various skills that will assist in their task of deletion. 

If you like your humor dry and your reading macabre, you must pick up this novel. 

This book is hilarious and droll and so much fun to read. I found myself wanting to visit the McMasters Conservatory, though of course it would be impossible to find as it is in such a secret location that even the staff and students don’t know where they are, and if I did somehow wind up there, it would certainly be a one-way trip. 

Welcome to Starling House. It’s creepy, it’s decrepit, it’s probably cursed. It sits in the middle of Eden, Kentucky, a small town plagued by mysterious deaths and disappearances. 

Come for the spooky house, stay for the incredibly dark, romantic, contemporary southern gothic fairy tale that swirls and twists and spins like a murmuration of starlings. 

Alix E. Harrow’s latest novel is Beauty and the Beast meets The Haunting of Hill House. The main character is neither the feisty Opal who will do whatever it takes to get her brother out of Eden, nor the trauma-laden, rarely glimpsed Arthur Starling, but in fact the borderline sentient Starling House with the temperament of an annoyed cat, a penchant for choosing its family, and a basement full of beasts. 

I want to live in the pages of this book. Starling House is one of the best things I’ve read this year.