Book Review: Installment Immortality (InCryptid, #14) by Seanan McGuire

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Installment Immortality
Series: Incryptid, #14
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: Tor Books
Publication date: March 11, 2025
Length: 432 pages
Genre: Urban fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Seanan McGuire’s New York Times-bestselling and Hugo Award-nominated InCryptid series continues with a whirlwind adventure….

After four generations of caring for the Price family, Mary Dunlavy has more than earned a break from the ongoing war with the Covenant of St. George. Instead, what she’s getting is a new employer, in the form of the anima mundi, Earth’s living soul made manifest, and a new assignment: to hunt down the Covenant agents on the East Coast and make them stop imprisoning America’s ghosts.

All in a day’s work for a phantom nanny, even one who’d really rather be teaching her youngest charges how to read.

One ghost can’t take on the entire Covenant without backup, which is how she winds up on a road trip with the still-mourning Elsie and the slowly collapsing Arthur, both of whom are reeling in their own way from the loss of their mother. New allies and new enemies await in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the path of the haunting leads.

With the anima mundi demanding results and Mary’s newfound freedom at stake, it’s down to Mary to make sure that everyone gets out of this adventure alive.

It’s been a long afterlife, but Mary Dunlavy’s not ready to be exorcised quite yet.

When you’re on the 14th book in an ongoing series, it feels practically impossible to talk about it in a way that will make sense to anyone who hasn’t been along for the journey. And in fact, even though I have read every one of these books, I needed a serious refresher before feeling ready to dive in. Um, what happened last time around? The details are a little fuzzy…

Fortunately, the narrator of Installment Immortality, ghost babysitter Mary Dunlavy, is just bouncing back from a major trauma and missed quite a bit, so her opening in the first chapter is quite helpful:

All right, this is where I recap. Because we’re dealing with five generations of family history here, and that’s a lot, even when you’ve been there from the beginning. I can’t count on anyone having been here from the beginning anymore, myself included, so I’ll give you the basic shape of things and hope that will be enough to ground you in this glorious ghost story already in progress.

Thanks, Mary!

The first chapter is Mary giving us a speed-recap, and it was just what I needed. (That, plus keeping the Incryptids wiki page bookmarked for easy reference.)

A brief explanation on the series (from my review of one of the earlier books):

The InCryptid series is a big, sprawling, interconnected story about the varied and sundry members of the Price/Healy clan — humans (mostly) who specialize in cryptozoology, the study and preservation of non-human people who live among us here on Earth. The arch-enemies of the Price gang (and all non-human species) is the Covenant, a powerful organization dedicated to hunting down and eliminating all cryptids — ostensibly to protect humans, but really, at this point, it’s more from deeply ingrained hatred and a desire to rid the world of everything non-human.

The series has had several different narrators, most of whom get a couple of books in a row before we move on to the next. Installment Immortality is Mary’s second book, and she picks up right where she left off in the previous book, Aftermarket Afterlife.

The Price-Healy family has inflicted serious harm on the Covenant, and now the Covenant wants payback. They’re trying to get it by rounding up and either destroying or weaponizing ghosts, and Mary’s new boss — the anima mundi, the living spirit of the world — wants it stopped before irreversible damage is done. Mary is tasked with finding these wannabe ghostbusters and doing whatever it takes to shut them down.

Meanwhile, the family is in tatters, having suffered two devastating losses in the last book. No one is operating at full speed, but Mary recognizes that siblings Elsie and Arthur need both a distraction and a purpose, and the three set off on a road trip to carry out her mission.

As we get into the main action of the story, the pace quickens and the stakes get higher and higher. Without going too far into the details, I’ll just say that the suspense becomes intense, and I was on the edge of my seat! You might think that when a main character is a ghost and therefore already dead, there wouldn’t be much risk… and you’d be wrong. Mary faces incredible danger, but her devotion to her kids (yes, Elsie and Arthur are adults, but once Mary has been someone’s babysitter, they’re always going to be her kids, no matter their age) keeps her focuses on her mission and determined to do whatever it takes to protect them.

Installment Immortality is another terrific addition to a great series. It can feel somewhat dense at times — there is A LOT to keep track of. But it’s worth it. With a series this big and sprawling, the mythology and interconnectedness is intense (and seriously, those wikis are essential!), but the emotional payoff of seeing the latest developments for characters we’ve had this much time to get to know and love is really rewarding.

Obviously, starting an ongoing series at book 14 is not going to be a satisfying reading experience. Each book builds upon the one before — so really, the only way to enjoy it is to start at the beginning (Discount Armageddon)… and then keep going!

As for me, I’m all in, and can’t wait for #15!

As with other books in the Incryptid series, this one includes a novella at the end, Mourner’s Waltz. The story features the same main character as in the previous novella, picking up the story several months later. There are strong emotional beats plus a nifty adventure. I can’t talk about it without major spoilers, but it was engaging and lovely… and makes me hope that the next main Incryptid book will bring this character back to center stage.

**Save

Save

13Aug2024

Book Review: Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Haunted Ever After
Series: Boneyard Key, #1
Author: Jen DeLuca
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: August 13, 2024
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

It’s love at first haunting in a seaside town that raises everyone’s spirits from USA Today bestselling author Jen DeLuca.

Small Florida coastal towns often find themselves scrambling for the tourism dollars that the Orlando theme parks leave behind. And within the town limits of Boneyard Key, the residents decided long ago to lean into its ghostliness. Nick Royer, owner of the Hallowed Grounds coffee shop, embraces the ghost tourism that keeps the local economy afloat, as well as his spectral roommate. At least he doesn’t have to run air-conditioning.

Cassie Rutherford possibly overreacted to all her friends getting married and having kids by leaving Orlando and buying a flipped historic cottage in Boneyard Key. Though there’s something unusual with her new home (her laptop won’t charge in any outlets, and the poetry magnets on her fridge definitely didn’t read “WRONG” and “MY HOUSE” when she put them up), she’s charmed by the colorful history surrounding her. And she’s catching a certain vibe from the grumpy coffee shop owner whenever he slips her a free slice of banana bread along with her coffee order.

As Nick takes her on a ghost tour, sharing town gossip that tourists don’t get to hear, and they spend nights side-by-side looking into the former owners of her haunted cottage, their connection solidifies into something very real and enticing. But Cassie’s worried she’s in too deep with this whole (haunted) home ownership thing… and Nick’s afraid to get too close in case Cassie gets scared away for good.

“The Most Haunted Small Town in Florida” — Boneyard Key — is the setting of Jen DeLuca’s first book in a new romance series, where the locals and their residents ghosts seem to live in a friendly sort of coexistence.

When Cassie relocates to Boneyard Key from the Orlando area, it’s for purely practical reasons — rents are out of control and her social group is no longer a fun place for a single, childless woman… so maybe buying an affordable home in a new town (with ocean views!) is just what she needs to reinvigorate herself. The renovated little cottage is adorable, although the electricity is a bit wonky. Luckily, there’s a cute coffee shop with reliable wifi nearby. Added bonus: The owner is hot and makes a mean banana bread.

At first, Cassie is skeptical about the town’s claim to fame and assumes the ghost fixation is all for the sake of tourism, but after some weird experiences in her new house, she’s willing to admit there may be more to it than she realized. And as Cassie learns more about the town history and her house’s former occupants, she comes to understand that she may need to find a way to connect with — and make peace with — the ghost she shares a home with.

Meanwhile, after a bumpy start with Nick, the cafe owner, a very nice little romance seems to be brewing (!) … until his behavior becomes concerning when he visits her house. Is he secretly a sexist ass… or is something else going on?

I love a good ghost story, but I’m not sure that Haunted Ever After really delivers one. Most of the ghosts we meet are perfectly nice, and their presence is more or less on the amusing side. There’s one nasty ghost — the rest are all lovely, and even offer dating advice and company for binge-watching trashy reality shows. As for the nasty ghost, it represents a key plot point that is really obvious to the reader, if not to the characters involved, and gets resolved by the end of the book.

Haunted Ever After is lots of fun, and makes an entertaining bit of fluffy summer diversion. I’m a big fan of the author’s Ren Faire series (Well Met plus three more books), so I had high expectations going into this book. Haunted Ever After is cute, but doesn’t quite live up to the richness of the other series — the characters aren’t as engaging, and the premise itself takes a bit more of a “just roll with it” attitude.

Haunted Ever After is cute, and the romance is sweet. As I mentioned, it’s pretty fluffy — but it’s enjoyable fluff, and made for a nice bit of reading over a few days when I needed something on the light side. It’ll be interested to see where the author goes next with Boneyard Key — I’d imagine that future books will focus on some of the side characters we meet in Haunted Ever After — and while they didn’t especially stand out for me, I’m guessing they’ll be much more interesting once they get leading roles of their own.

Overall, Haunted Ever After is a good choice for a late summer read… or save it and read in October, if you’re in the mood for a non-scary haunted house book!

15May2024

Book Review: The House that Horror Built by Christina Henry

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The House that Horror Built
Author: Christina Henry
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: May 14, 2024
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Thriller
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

A single mother working in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets.

Harry Adams loves horror movies, so it’s no coincidence that she accepted a job cleaning house for horror-movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding gray-stone Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes as well as glittering awards from his career making movies that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.

Javier values discretion, and Harry always tries to keep the house immaculate, her head down, and her job safe. Then she hears noises from behind a locked door, noises that sound remarkably like a human voice calling for help. Harry knows not asking questions is a vital part of keeping her job, but she soon discovers that the house may be home to secrets she can’t ignore.

The House that Horror Built is a clever haunted house story, set in a post-COVID world in which the odds seem stacked against single mother Harry and her son Gabe.

The world is just reemerging from lockdown. 14-year-old Gabe’s school is open for in-person learning three days per week. After losing her previous restaurant work when everything shut down, Harry has finally found a decent job again, which means — if she’s frugal — she can still pay her bills and put food on the table for her son. Years earlier as a teen, Harry lived on the streets and in shelters, and she knows just how close to losing it all she and Gabe are — especially once she receives an eviction notice from her heartless landlord.

Fortunately, Harry’s part-time job pays very, very well. She works as a housecleaner for Javier Castillo, a world-renowned, Oscar-winning director who now lives as a recluse behind the gates of Bright Horses, his Chicago mansion. A life-long horror fan herself, Harry can truly appreciate Javier’s artistry and loves his movies, but even she is somewhat shaken by the replicas and original props that fill his house, especially the masks and costumes from one of his creepiest movies. It’s Harry’s job to keep all of these spotless, no matter how uneasy they make her.

Javier seems to take an interest in Harry and Gabe, and when he starts inviting them for meals at his home, it’s hard to say no, even though Harry isn’t comfortable blurring the lines between professional and personal. Still, Gabe is over the moon at being invited into such an icon’s home, and he develops an instant rapport with Javier. But Harry has heard and seen unexplainable things in the house, and when a dinner with two of Javier’s leading film stars ends in tragedy, Harry knows that something is very, very wrong. Yet with eviction looming, she may have no choice but to move into Javier’s home with Gabe… and there’s definitely danger waiting for them there.

The House that Horror Built is a slow-burn horror story. The terror is more of the psychological variety — no guts and gore spilling out of the shadows, and no buckets of blood. Instead, there’s a sense of menace pervading Bright Horses — the feeling that something is moving when Harry’s head is turned, unexplained noises from behind locked doors, glaring eyes from inanimate objects. It’s creepy, and Harry knows it’s creepy, so why does she bring her son into this place?

Here’s where I feel the book has such an interesting hook: We may scream at horror movie characters to walk away, don’t open that door, don’t go into the haunted house… but in reality, people don’t always have options. Harry and Gabe literally have nowhere to go. The building where they’ve lived for ten years has been sold and is slated for demolition. There aren’t any affordable apartments available, and anyway, with such little notice, Harry has no money saved for a down-payment, much less moving expenses. She knows she’s lucky to have gotten the job with Javier. If she loses it, she and Gabe will be on the streets, and while she survived her earlier experiences of homelessness, she’s determined to avoid that for her son by any means necessary.

So yes, Harry moves Gabe into Javier’s home, knowing full well that the place may very well be haunted, and that something malevolent lurks in the corners and very probably wants to hurt her. But at Bright Horses, Gabe has a room, plenty of food, and a safe way to get to school. Author Christina Henry does a superb job showing the choices and sacrifices a mother will make to care for her child.

In terms of the horror story, it’s somewhat of a mixed bag. There’s a creepiness to the book, and we know from the start that something seems off about Javier. We learn that he became a recluse after a family tragedy, and after the most recent scandal in Chicago, he’s once again being hounded by paparazzi. Javier seems determined to help Harry and Gabe, even when she clearly doesn’t want him in their lives. And then there are the noises and the inexplicable events in the house — how much is Javier aware of?

The secrets of the house aren’t revealed until close to the end, and although I’d guessed what was going on, there were still elements that surprised me. I did feel that the ending was too abrupt. We’re left with answers about Bright Horses and Javier, and the immediate situation is resolved, but we don’t actually get any big-picture resolution for Harry and Gabe. After investing so much in their struggles, it feels unfinished to not get an epilogue that lets us know what happens next for them (and, hopefully, to let us know that they’re doing well!).

Overall, I enjoyed The House that Horror Built. Christina Henry’s books are always intensely gripping, and this one is no exception. Once I started I couldn’t put it down. Apart from not feeling fully satisfied by the ending, I enjoyed the building tension of the story as well as having such an interesting, unusual lead character as Harry. Recommended for fans of haunted house stories and horror movie buffs!

21Jan2023

Book Review: Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Episode Thirteen
Author: Craig DiLouie
Publisher: Redhook
Publication date: January 24, 2023
Length: 467 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Review copy via the publisher
Rating:

A ghost-hunting reality TV crew gain unprecedented access to an abandoned and supposedly haunted mansion, which promises a groundbreaking thirteenth episode, but as they uncover the secret history of the house, they learn that “reality” TV might be all too real — in Bram Stoker Award nominated author Craig DiLouie’s latest heart pounding novel of horror and psychological suspense.

Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost hunting reality TV show. It’s led by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin and features a dedicated crew of ghost-hunting experts.

Episode Thirteen takes them to Matt’s holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This crumbling, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about the bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It’s also, undoubtedly, haunted, and Matt hopes to use their scientific techniques and high tech gear to prove it.

But, as the house begins to slowly reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of.

A story told in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, correspondence, and research files, this is the story of Episode Thirteen — and how everything went horribly wrong.

This book was always going to be a must-read for me. I’ve read Craig DiLouie’s three most recent novels and loved them all (despite how disturbing they all are). Not only that — haunted house + found records + unexplained disappearances = just what I want in a scary book!

In Episode Thirteen, we follow the crew of Fade to Black, a ghost-hunting reality show with a twist that sets it apart. Each episode features examination of a supposed haunting, led by star and true believer Matt Kirklin — but with Matt’s wife Claire Kirklin, a scientist with a Ph.D. in physics, there to debunk every finding and offer explanations for every finding. It’s been a winning formula among fans, but of course the network honchos want bigger excitement and bigger ratings if the show is to get a second season.

As we learn from the outset, something goes terribly wrong during the filming of the show’s 13th episode. Matt and Claire, along with the tech team of Kevin and Jake, plus Jessica, an actress hired by the network to make the show more popularly appealing, investigate Foundation House in Virginia for this episode. Foundation House is infamous for the disappearance of a group of paranormal investigators in the 1970s, who mixed new age mumbo jumbo with startlingly cruel psychological experiments and plenty of hallucinogenic drugs. No answer has ever been found about this group’s fate.

In Episode Thirteen, Matt hopes to capture evidence of the supposed haunting rumored to have taken place in the house — but the crew gets much, much more. As they spend more time in the house, strange events build upon each other, promising a television episode unlike anything ever before seen… but only if they themselves survive.

Told through the crews’ journals, text messages, transcripts of video footage, and other documentation, we follow the events as they unfold. The journals especially give us insight into each character’s inner doubts and fears, what they believe, and what they want. As the book progresses, we see them all become sucked into the paranormal events they’re there to investigate, risking more and more not just for the sake of a TV show, but to pursue the inescapable obsession to find the truth that builds within each characters.

There’s a fascinating creepiness to the way the story unfolds. We learn about events through the various written records, rather than by reading a straight-forward narrative. At first, I found this somewhat distancing — but as the book progresses, the inclusion of the crew’s journals provides the deeper characters insights that might otherwise be missing. In fact, it ends up being a clever device for having an omniscient viewpoint. At various times throughout the book, we’re privy to each character’s private thoughts and doubts, and this greatly expands our understanding of why they act as they do.

Of course, as in any haunted house book, inside I was screaming at the characters as they made one dangerous or foolhardy decision after another. No, don’t go down into the dark well! No, don’t enter the scary tunnel! WHY WOULD YOU DO THESE THINGS? But, this is where obsession comes into play. These characters aren’t stupid. They understand that it would be safer to walk away, but their need to know overrides all elements of caution or common sense.

One of the plot elements that I considered a plot hole throughout the latter half of the book (I won’t say what, because it’s pretty spoilery) gets very neatly resolved right at the end, and it made me appreciate the author’s cleverness all over again.

This is not a good book to read late at night! I wasn’t scared exactly, but the building sense of dread and disaster meant that I couldn’t put the book down — and since my routine is to read in bed before falling asleep, I found myself reluctantly stopping once I realized how late it was, only to be absolutely wide awake and fully alert.

Craig DiLouie writes disturbing, strange books that stay with the reader long after finishing the final pages. Episode Thirteen is no exception. Fascinating even when the sense of nearby doom is nearly overwhelming, and what an ending!! Definitely check it out… but maybe check your fear of darkness and closed spaces before you enter.

10Dec2022

Book Review: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Dead Romantics
Author: Ashley Poston
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: June 28, 2022
Length: 366 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston.

Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.

When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.

For ten years, she’s run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.

Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.

Romance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.

This was a good one!

The plot synopsis is almost too complicated, but once you get into the story, the pieces fit. Basically, Florence is a ghostwriter for one of the most successful romance writers in the industry, but she’s behind on turning in the last book she has under contract. After a harsh betrayal and break-up a year earlier, she just can’t envision true love and happy endings any more. But the clock is ticking, and not finishing is really not an option.

Florence’s family owns the funeral home in a small southern town. She grew up with parents who were infuriatingly romantic and in love, and their home was filled with joy. Florence also has a secret — she sees dead people. Both she and her father have the gift of seeing and being able to interact with ghosts, but when this becomes public during Florence’s teens, she faces so much ridicule and bullying that she swears never to return to her hometown again.

Now an adult living in Manhattan, she’s stayed away for ten years, but is forced to go back and deal with the past when her father dies suddenly. Amidst the turmoil of family grief and planning a funeral, the ghost of Florence’s brand new editor shows up on her doorstep, which is especially concerning since she had no idea that he’d died.

Dead Romantics is a love story, but it’s so much more. It’s a loving depiction of a family that celebrates life and views death as just another part of the journey. It’s also a look at the internal life of a writer, and it’s a study of what it means to feel lost and hopeless and burdened by shattered illusions.

I love how Florence’s family is shown, and I love the rituals they invent and embrace to celebrate the life of a man who seems like the perfect husband and father. I also really enjoyed the strangeness of Florence getting to know the ghost of a man she’d only met once, and how their connection is able to develop and bridge the obvious gap between a living woman and a man who’s passed on.

I won’t give anything away… but I couldn’t see how there could be a solution to their situation that made sense.

There were no happily ever afters between an undertaker’s daughter and her ghost.

Surprise! The ending totally works, satisfied me, and left me feeling upbeat and cheery.

The writing is quite lovely, and having suffered a family loss recently myself, I found that certain passages really resonated:

I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

There’s a certain character who deserves to suffer some truly bad karma and I felt a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see that happen… but then again, that’s not what this story was really about.

Overall, I’m really glad that I picked up Dead Romantics and gave it a try. It was just the right mixture of sentiment, humor, sadness, and joy that I needed this week. Having read this author’s Once Upon a Con YA trilogy, I was curious to see how she’d do with her adult fiction debut. I’m happy to report that she nailed it!

1Nov2020

Book Review: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Plain Bad Heroines
Author: Emily M. Danforth
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication date: October 20, 2020
Length: 608 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Purchased
Rating:

The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.
Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.
Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.
A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagination of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read.

This 600+ page book almost defies description, but I’ll give it a shot!

“I wish some one would write a book about a plan bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her.” – Mary MacLane

Plain Bad Heroines is a story-within-a-story book, with interlocking characters and motifs that center on the (supposedly) cursed and/or haunted grounds of the Brookhants School for Girls — an early 20th century institution for the education of society girls, located on a wooded estate in upper-crust Rhode Island.

In 1902, students Clara and Flo are inspired by the writings of (real-life) Mary MacLane and form a secret society, the Plain Bad Heroines, to celebrate her work and her life. Clara and Flo are in love, but after a disastrous trip home and a ride back to school with her judgmental cousin, Clara storms off into the woods to meet up with Flo, only for both girls to meet a ghastly end by being attacked by swarms of yellow jackets.

In our own timeline, the events from 1902 gain new notoriety after Merritt Emmons publishes The Happenings at Brookhants at the age of sixteen. Now years later, the book is being made into a film by an edgy director, with superstar “celesbian” Harper Harper committed to star as Flo. Merritt is on board as a producer, and she’s not pleased when Audrey Wood, a B-list actor who bombed her audition in a major way, is cast as Clara.

As the production cast and crew settle in to film on location at Brookhants, weird things start to happen, and there’s much more going on than can be easily explained. Is the place truly haunted? Or is this Hollywood manipulation at its most devious?

The plot weaves backward and forward in time, cutting between the modern-day movie storyline and the complicated relationships between Harper, Merritt, and Audrey, and the timeline that includes the aftermath of Clara and Flo’s deaths and the impact on Libbie, the school headmistress, and her lover, Alex (Alexandra).

There’s so much more to both pieces of the story than is readily apparent, and the author carefully layers on more and more hints and explanations, constantly deepening the story and shifting its direction and meaning.

Plain Bad Heroines is proudly, unabashedly queer, and its (plain, bad) heroines make no attempts to follow anyone’s rules but their own. They love as they please, and take inspiration from Mary MacLane’s own bold pronouncements when they need courage. The relationships are intricate and shifting, in both timelines, and the character refuse to be cookie-cutter types — author Emily M. Danforth does an amazing job of managing such a large cast and making sure each individual character has a life and personality of her own.

This book is BIG, and it takes concentration, but I could not stop reading once I started. The writing style is clever and filled with footnotes and commentary that are snarky and funny and informative. There are also dire and tragic happenings — and this IS a horror story too, with plenty of creepy, spine-tingling moments.

Black and white illustrations throughout the book add to the overall mood and make reading this book feel like an experience.

Yellow jackets are scary anyway, but now, having read Plain Bad Heroines, I’m pretty sure I’m terrified of them. Read the book — you’ll see what I mean.

I really only have two complaints about Plain Bad Heroines, and the first is not with the story itself but with the layout. Whoever picked the typeface for this book should have paid more attention to the asterisks that lead to the footnotes — I almost never saw them (they’re tiny), and had to constantly go back and search the page to see where the footnotes connect to.

My second complaint is a larger one, which is that I wasn’t completely satisfied with the ending. It leaves a bunch of unanswered questions, and I’m a little frustrated that certain elements didn’t get more clarity and resolution.

Still, this is overall a marvelous and unique book, and I laughed and shivered my way through it. The final scene takes place at the Cannes Festival premiere of The Happenings at Brookhants, and all I could think was, damn! I wish this was a real movie, because it would be fascinating to see how it all worked out.

Plain Bad Heroines is a terrific read. Don’t miss it!

To learn more about the real Mary MacLane, visit The Mary MacLane Project.

14Mar2020

Book Review: The Deep by Alma Katsu

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Deep
Author: Alma Katsu
Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication date: March 10, 2020
Length: 432 pages
Genre: Horror/Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Someone, or something, is haunting the Titanic.
This is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the passengers of the ship from the moment they set sail: mysterious disappearances, sudden deaths. Now suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone during the four days of the liner’s illustrious maiden voyage, a number of the passengers – including millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, the maid Annie Hebbley and Mark Fletcher – are convinced that something sinister is going on . . . And then, as the world knows, disaster strikes.
Years later and the world is at war. And a survivor of that fateful night, Annie, is working as a nurse on the sixth voyage of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic, now refitted as a hospital ship. Plagued by the demons of her doomed first and near fatal journey across the Atlantic, Annie comes across an unconscious soldier she recognises while doing her rounds. It is the young man Mark. And she is convinced that he did not – could not – have survived the sinking of the Titanic . . .

I had high hopes for The Deep, but sadly, I finished the book feeling underwhelmed after struggling throughout to stay engaged.

Partially, this may have been due to mistaken expectations. I expected a story about something coming from the deep to menace the Titanic and the people on board. I mean, based on the cover and the title, that’s reasonable, right? But that’s not really the story here, not exactly.

The Deep reads mostly like a fictionalized recounting of the Titanic’s doomed voyage. We meet the famous real-life first class passengers, including the Astors and Guggenheims, and see the luxury of their accommodations. At the same time, we’re introduced to the fictional Annie Hebbley, a stewardess working in the first -class cabins, as well as several other fictional passengers.

Much of the story is a straight-forward narrative of upper class and lower class, the gossip and intrigue that ensues by having so many people of privilege in this exclusive setting, and the below-stairs pressure on the ship’s serving crew. We don’t actually spend any time in steerage, coming closest in the presence of two boxers who charm the first-class passengers while running cons and planning for a new life in New York.

The supernatural elements creep in as weird things happen involving Annie, her strange connection to a couple and their baby, and some unexplainable interludes with a few of the top tier passengers.

The Titanic scenes alternate with scenes on board the Britannic four years later, where Annie works as a nurse to wounded soldiers, and which undergoes its own nautical tragedy.

Look, a novel about the Titanic has to hit certain beats. It needs to follow the historical events, present some of the real-life characters, and give a sense of the scope of the tragedy. The Deep is only partially successful here. The scenes amongst the first-class passengers focus on their petty interactions, but as a whole fail to really captivate or give a sense of the grandness of the sailing. And there’s more or less a complete disregard for the passengers in steerage. They’re referenced in passing, but we really don’t get any sense of their experience.

As far as the iceberg and the sinking, these are told through the eyes of the characters we’ve come to know, but again, the main events seem just like backdrop.

I ended up interested in the ghost-story twists revealed toward the end of the book, but that’s not enough to rescue what was mostly a struggle to stay interested. The supernatural elements are scattered throughout the story, but not strongly enough to create any sense of suspense or horror.

Perhaps the ghost story would have been better served by being set on an anonymous, fictional ship. You don’t need the Titanic for the story that was ultimately told, and that piece of the narrative just isn’t grand enough to have an impact on what we know of the true tragedy of the Titanic and its passengers.

I’ve read other works of fiction set on the Titanic which hew very closely to the real events and yet manage to bring us up front and center. The two that come to mind most strongly are Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge and The Midnight Watch by David Dyer. Both are excellent.

For me, The Deep was not a great reading experience. And it’s up to you whether you’d consider this a plus or a minus, but I’ve had images of Titanic (the movie) firmly embedded in my brain ever since starting the book. And obviously, Celine Dion’s soundtrack has been haunting me ever since…

18Jul2018

Shelf Control #126: Abandon by Blake Crouch

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: Abandon
Author: Blake Crouch
Published: 2009
Length: 521 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman, and child in a remote gold-mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins—and not a single bone was ever found.

One hundred sixteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them to the abandoned mining town so they can learn what happened. Recently, a similar party had also attempted to explore the town and was never heard from again. Now the area is believed to be haunted. This crew is about to discover, twenty miles from civilization with a blizzard bearing down, that they are not alone, and the past is very much alive.

How and when I got it:

I picked up Abandon when there was a Kindle price drop a few years ago.

Why I want to read it:

Ooh, sounds creepy, doesn’t it? I’ve only read one book by this author (Dark Matter, which I loved), but I’d like to read more. And hey, I’m a sucker for a good ghost story… eerie disappearances and deserted western towns are definitely a plus!

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