"Everything is survivable," is Margaret's motto, because she is one tough woman and I love her!

Who's afraid of a ghostly maid who makes you tea when you've been married to Howard for 30 years? What's a couple of staring, mutilated ghost children when you've lived with Howard's drinking? What's a tall, spindly, maniacal, evil spirit when Howard's been using you as a punching bag? Besides, the walls bleed and the house shrieks and moans only one month out of the year. Margaret has survived much worse!

An excellent EXCELLENT horror story with ghosts and haunted houses, expertly compared to the horrors of learning to live by the rules to stay safe in an abusive relationship.

Do you like cool, muscle cars? Intense car races and games of chicken? Murderous vampires and vampire slaying? Badass nuns? Stories of revenge? Read this book! Actually, listen to the audiobook version. Once again, the author Christopher Buehlman does a fantastic job reading his own work with really wonderful voice acting!

I read The Lesser Dead first and really, really enjoyed it so I decided to read his other vampire book next. They aren't part of a series (might take place in the same universe, if there was a clue I missed it), but the type of vampire he created is the same: burns in sunlight, lives a long time, can mesmerize their prey which makes them drool when they're "charmed", very hard to kill.

He does go off on tangents and monologues a lot in this one though, which I feel is easier to get through with an audiobook, but man, it got a bit long and Stephen King-like with some of these back stories of characters that we meet for, like, 10 pages and they're gone!

A short story that is both feminist and monster f$#@ing! Definitely more on the feminist side. The ending was... very quick and uh....hm, not sure how I feel about it. Definitely a good look at the life and standards held to a house wife in the 1980s.

I listened to the audio book version but I can't say I enjoyed the narrator so much. I say that if you read this, just stick to the print version!

This book was definitely my type of horror. A little strange, a little subtle, found footage, creepy shit showing up on film and something unknowable showing up in the dark that might kill you. Excellent horror stuff that Angie likes! The beginning part of it gave me "Signs" vibes.



It did seem to get a little...I don't want to say "slow", it was still creepy and mysterious...but I guess I really wanted answers and was starting to get anxious like, "All right already! Quit making this poor exhausted man fly from place to place to only get mere crumbs of evidence and answers! Just tell us already!"

+100 points because it didn't go in the direction I thought it was going.

Spoiler

-200 points because I REALLY REALLY wanted it to be aliens. I thought I had it all figured out and the thought of aliens from another dimensions coming into our world, and leaving behind those stains, to abduct the people of the cult and Kyle. That was why he would wake up hovering over the bed or have the weird dreams that he was stuck in another body! I guess skeletal damned people of cults past is scary too but once I got those "Signs" vibes I had my heart set on aliens.

Still, a great horror book that I really enjoyed! Nothing too deep, just a poor, sleep-deprived Indy film-maker being made to endure one scare after another. Classic.

DNF. I got about 1/3 of the way through and wasn't having much fun being too confused. It reminded me a little but of Terry Pratchett, but, in the end the purposefully-obtuse humor, too many characters, and those chapters where they're trying to be mysterious as to which character is doing what ("the monster who had once been a man" did yadda yadda and obtained a secret). Just give me the freakin' name. No need to draw out this fuckin' mystery! It just made me confused what was going on since it wasn't linear, who they were trying to refer to, and I wasn't having fun and just getting angry.

Oh, and you know those fanfics back in the day, usually with the "crack" tag in it, where people throw their favorite characters together from different fandoms and try to make it hilarious mayhem but with poor writing and you don't know who is saying what? This book gave me that vibe too often.

Another great short story with Easton, Angus, and Miss Potter! Always happy to read more of T. Kingfisher's writing!

4.5 stars! I'm always a sucker for haunted houses, and this one is a haunted AirBnB in Italy! Wouldn't that just suck?! And it does for Anna, who honestly is haunted more by her family than by this historical tuscan villa they rent for their trip to Italy. I will warn you, I got "A Little Princess" syndrome while reading this (ALPS is where the main character is outspoken and bullied and you get really angry on their behalf because they deserve better and everyone is just SO MEAN!), and I would often cheer Anna on when she spoke up for herself or called out a family member when they were being rude or unkind to her. And hoo boy does her family treat her awful. Especially her sister. For real? What was that bitch's problem?! [Calm down Angie, they're not real characters, breathe.] So lots of shouting out loud and speaking and cheering while I listened to this audiobook in my car.

While this book isn't perfect, it was perfect for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Oof, this one gets real and discusses some tough subjects, but I'm always here rooting for all our darling, adorable couples in the Osemanverse!

Goodness, we don't have much left of this series do we?? College looms large and good times in high school are quickly coming to an end! What will happen????

Catching up on Noragami and binging them. I feel like we've been on this arc about Yato's father for, like, so long now and I'm starting to get a little tired of it. Plus, can we stop torturing poor Yukine? Could he just stop and think for a moment?