Like the protagonist of the movie The Skeleton Key, I found myself bound up in a tale of frightful horror that first intrigued me, then seduced me into fear, and finally left me believing. The story starts in 1979 and picks up every nine years until the present day as Slade House acquires both notoriety and souls. This is a terrifying book where being smart won't save you, and there is no such thing as a way out.

A fictionalized-ish tale of Cummings' experience in WWI when held as a prisoner by France. It was a good excuse to practice my French, but not one I would read again. The first few pages were very funny, the bulk of the middle is distressing, and the end is suddenly poetic. It feels like it was written over the course of many years and never revised. I can't say I blame him, though his ebullience over the whole experience is definitely strange.

A really fun, if a bit slow, read. I loved the development of Bonnie from a quiet, moralistic girl to a speakeasy waitress to the lover of a fugitive. I was a little disappointed we didn't get more of her more well-known stories, but her character growth and her friends and family were handled expertly.

This book is so immediately engaging that a third of the way through I put the book down, went on Amazon, ordered the second and third books, and then picked it back up.

I love how Bardugo has crafted a world that is alien and frightening and yet still, somehow, a place I want to see. Her characters (good and evil alike) are so compelling that I changed sides every few chapters. I love Alina -- she is spunky and funny and realistic.

Highly recommend to fans of fantasy, romance, war, and books that center on choice.

A little bit slow to start, but builds into a touching and fun and though-provoking look into how we interact with one another. I really liked that there were no human characters. Chambers is a master.

This fantastically built novel manages to mush likable characters, a complicated plot and even more complicated alien species into an absolutely hilarious novel that questions science, humanity, and morality. My only complaint is that it reads more like a television show than a novel; it felt very episodic. I loved the dialogue and the discussions of cultural differences between the aliens, and the made-up science was delightful.

I listen to a podcast called Cults. It's a little bit dry, and there are a lot of ads, but I listen to it anyway because I am morbidly fascinated by how people get sucked in to these weird and horrible situations. The more modern it is, the more scary, because it's so easy to think "how can this happen" and so I like to be aware of all the warning signs.

I read this book because I felt I finally have enough distance from November's election to not run screaming wildly into the woods. Also, a friend recommended it as one of the easier-to-read Trump books. Mostly, reading it just made me feel slimy and in need of a shower.

As you might expect, Cohen reiterates over and over that Trump is a cult. An unsurprising fact, as is much of the book, unfortunately. Yes, Cohen confirms a lot of the average person's suspicions: Trump really is more gross and immoral and horrible than you thought. No, he really doesn't care about anyone but himself.

I wanted to get into the mindset of someone who had swam in and escaped this cult, but Cohen spent most of his time admitting that he was not a good person, and asking you to listen to him anyway. This would have been a better book if Cohen was capable of self-reflection and could honestly look back on this and lay out the warning signs for the next situation like this, or express any real regret.

But if Cohen was capable of that kind of self-honesty, he never would have found himself in Trump's inner circle. And so, it is disappointing and flavorless.

This was so boring that I kept forgetting I was reading it and picking up other books in the meantime. It didn't get interesting until well past the midpoint, and by then I was only still reading because it's for a book club.

All of the characters felt very flat, and I think it's because none of them has anyone to really on. Of the five viewpoints (Lin, Jovis, Phalue, Ramani, Sand) none of them have any friends, so every single scene is a monologue. They never bounce ideas off of other people, for example, and it feels like not one of them has the ability to behave like a normal human.

I really wanted to like this. There is bone magic and a cute sea serpent! But I can't be bothered to finish the series.

What a whacking disappointment.

I was really excited for the mish mash of Edgar Allan Poe and Tiger King, yet this was just a mess of a book with thirty different plot points in direct contradiction to each other. The alternating viewpoints fail because both girls sound exactly the same. The suspension of disbelief is required to be much too high: the brick thing only makes sense as a nod to Poe, there is no reason given for or even interest paid to the flu that's making partygoers sick, there's wild animals, an abused girl, missing adults, drunk teenagers on a livestream, a town that only cares about your name -- it's too much. McGinnis isn't skilled enough to make it work.

I cannot stand when the first book in a series ends on a cliffhanger, but this one had multiple cliffs. Not one plot point gets resolved by the end, and I actually went back and re-read the last ten pages and skimmed the acknowledgments just to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I hadn't.