Creative and cute! I always yawn about 100 times while reading this book which I guess means it's working???

Olivia invites her friends Francine and Julian for a sleepover, staging an elaborate hotel scenario to keep everyone entertained. Ian, excluded from the game, decides to scare everyone.

While the plot has potential, the story is a little bit dry, and I don't think it showcases Olivia's unique personality very effectively. I also felt like there was a page missing or something? How does Olivia suddenly realize that Ian is the ghost? There's no scene of confrontation, and that seems like a wasted opportunity.

Neve, a young writer, describes her unhappy marriage to Edwyn and recounts some of the circumstances that led up to her current situation in life.

Riley has crafted a narrative voice that is by turns laugh-out-loud funny and shockingly painful to read. What a nuanced, grueling portrait of abuse.

Only complaint is that I wish the scene of Neve and Edwyn's first encounter were included; I think it would be interesting to see how their tumultuous relationship began.

Well worth the read.

DNF @ p. 50

Just not for me right now. While there's definitely value in Christina's family story, I'm struggling to stay engaged, especially with all of the memory sequences and timeline changes.

What would happen if all the snowmen came alive on Christmas Eve and had their own celebration?? This is a bold speculation because in order for that to happen there would have to be A LOT of snow BEFORE Christmas which has never happened in my lifetime. ANYWAY the illustrations are good and the rhyming is decent

So this is an incredibly brief novelization (??) of a TV movie and it reads like it. Constant information dumping makes the whole thing ridiculous and impossible to connect to. I think it's a victim of its format but it's still annoying. Also the names??? Blair, Hadley, Delancy?? Huh

Montresor takes revenge on wine-loving Fortunato in the creepy catacombs. Deliciously grim

Don't really know how to rate this one because it's so disturbing to me personally but I think that just means it works??

The narrator claims to love animals, but his anger management issues cause him to lash out at them with often deadly consequences. Will they take revenge??

While the story is well written and dark as all hell, I do think there is a bit of a disconnect between the narrator's actions and described motivations- I'm not sure that there's enough depth to his personality for me to believe in his sadistic wackiness.

Nice illustrations, but the concept is so-so and the rhyming is just okay.

Our protagonist inherits a vast estate only to be met with fear from the townspeople and horror within the house. While captivating, I felt that the terror of the plot was lost in part due to the narrative style- slow, proper language and open ended conclusions cut down the tension for me.