Good Neighbors: "The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires" by Grady Hendrix

This one grabbed me right from the first few sentences. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix is the perfect book to read this time of year or any time, because it's that good and that original!
 Beginning in 1988, Patricia Campbell is a good Southern housewife and mother. She and her equally good housewife friends live in a safe, nobody locks their doors suburban community of Charleston, South Carolina, and belong to a proper book club, where it turns out nobody actually read the classics the host imposed on them. Leaving the final meeting, one of the ladies suggests they read “real” books, the kind that everyone really wants to read, true crime! Everyone enthusiastically takes part, and after months of reading, they’re pretty much experts on the details of what to look for if you were ever in a similar situation to the victims. Still, they feel pretty secure, as they look after the homes and children while their husbands are out earning a living. Or are they as safe as they believe? One night, something shocking happens to Patricia! This Is when the story begins to take some unexpected twists and turns as the characters wake up to the fact that not all is pleasant in Mt. Pleasant.

I loved the author’s style of writing. And this is a fun read with some real scary surprises, I mean, given the title, I expected something, but not the author’s take on “vampires”. It also has aspects of feminism, as these women have to worry about, or answer to their husbands about the every day decisions they make. I highly recommend this one.

Persuasion: Of Love and Violence: Tainted Love Book 3 by Kayla Lowe

 

Spoiler Alert! If you haven't read Kayla Lowe's Tainted Love series from the beginning, don't read any further, because you want to follow the love story of 18 year old Sarah MacKenzie and the man she thought was the answer to her dreams, the much older Bruce, right from the start.

After dealing with her family's disapproval of Bruce, who, as it turned out, was even older than her Dad, Sarah agrees to go with him to Florida, where he was from, to begin a new life. They take an endless bus journey and arrive to find Bruce's buddy, Ron, waiting for them. They are happy to see each other, and Sarah feels a pang of regret at how close she and her cousin Addison used to be. 

Ron seems nice and is friendly to her and she notices he's handicapped, missing one arm and part of a hand, due, she finds out, from a work related accident. He drops them at a motel for the night and the next day, they move into an older apartment building, and Sarah learns, much to her consternation, that there are two bars attached to the hotel, one a hip hop bar and the other, a country bar. So begins Sarah's life in Florida. Would they ever be able to afford to live at the beach, as Bruce had promised?

Her issues with Bruce drinking only increased as he  and she were to spend more and more time at Ron's. Ron's brother, Ken, a creepy sort of character, also lived there. While Ron had a pool and Sarah enjoyed swimming there, she also noticed the guys seemed to drink more when they were together, and smoke like chimneys. They hung out in Ron's garage, and she caught Ken watching her swim and ogling her bikini.  The more time they spent at Ron's, the more money Bruce seemed to spend on drinks and smokes. To justify his drinking, he begins to buy alcoholic drinks for Sarah. More and more she falls into drinking a bit to keep Bruce company. 

Sarah is such a nice girl, pretty and raised to do the right things. Now, here she is, hanging out with men so much older than her, and finding Bruce was more and more possessive of her, fuming whenever another guy looks her way or compliments her. Is this what she signed up for? A year before, she was an  A college student, enjoying all the fun of living with Addison and college life. Will Sarah and Bruce's relationship be all she hoped? Would her family ever accept her decision and the man she abandoned them for? 

Be sure to read Kayla Lowe's addictive Tainted Love Series from the beginning to follow Sarah and Bruce's story. Sarah is a realistic young woman and you can see how she finds Bruce attractive. Of Love and Violence takes us deeper into their relationship. What happens after... we have to wait for the next book to find out!

Heart of Darkness: "Into the Heartless Wood" by Joanna Ruth Meyer

In Into the Heartless Wood Joanna Ruth Meyer has created a world that is magical and horrifying and somehow a world that is completely believable.  It's a world in which the woods are alive and the stars predict the future. It also has one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful love stories I've read in ages. 

 Ms. Meyer draws the reader in from the very first sentence, in which one of a stand of birch trees is brought to life to be the daughter of the Gwydden, who is a kind of  goddess that is all powerful, and merciless, and that is neither woman nor tree and who rules the wood around her. This new daughter is one of her mother's monsters, sirens whose song is so beautiful and enticing, it lures whoever hears it into the forest to be destroyed by these creatures. 

Bordering these woods is a cottage in which resides a young man, Owen, his two year old sister, Awela, and his father, an astronomer who secretly charts the stars for the king of their region. Owen's mother was lost to the wood a year or so before. Devastated by her loss his father has built a wall between the cottage and the woods so his children will be marginally safer. As time passes, the branches begin to reach over the wall.

One day, Owen convinces his father that he could help him by taking the train to the city to file his father's star charts. He had heard warnings that the forest was encroaching the train tracks. Still, things seemed calm until suddenly the train is derailed, passengers flung this way and that, and the song of the sirens surrounds them. He manages to get out of the wreckage to find, to his horror, the tree sirens are murdering the victims of the accident, bodies lying all through the surrounding area.

When a siren comes upon him, something strange happens, her song pinning him to the ground, she stares at him and then tells him to run. She has let him go. And what happens after this gesture is something you will have to read to find out. The Recommender found this to be a book I couldn't put down. I had to stay up late to finish it and I will just warn you that at moments you may find yourself weeping on your kindle or book pages. The Recommender did! 5 stars for this one! Order it, download it or borrow it from your Library. You will not be disappointed! Thank you to NetGalley for the DRC!

Before She Was Found by Heather Gudenkauf

Sometimes, when the Recommender is doing something else, like working on cartoons or painting a room, I get to listen to audiobooks! Recently, I listened to a few really good ones with great narrators that kept you wanting to listen, even if your work was all done.

Such was the case with Heather Gudenkauf's Before She Was Found. The narrator, Brittany Presley,  really became the characters in this riveting story based, loosely, on the Slenderman myth which inspired 2 young girls to stab their friend 19 times to impress this fictional character.

Told from varying viewpoints and through journals and texts that begin by describing a nightmarish late night encounter by the railroad tracks, Before She was Found grabs the reader (or listener!) and immerses them in the lives of these characters, especially those of three twelve year old girls, Violet, the new girl in the town of Pitch, Iowa. Cora, an outcast among her peers, someone who is not good at sports or the other activities the girls in town excel at and with a strict father, and a pretty, popular sister, she spends time writing in her journal and trying to fit in without attracting the notice of her frenemy, Jordyn. Queen of the mean girls, Jordyn is always the first to point out Cora's lack of popularity and loser status. Raised by her grandparents, who live over the bar her grandfather owns, she is often out on her own, running wild, bullying others and getting into trouble.

Violet ends up in Pitch by accident when her mother's car breaks down, so she, her mother and brother end up staying in town, Cora hopes Violet will be her new best friend.They both like to draw and Violet is particularly gifted. Jordyn decided Violet should be her friend and sets out to steal her away, though it sometimes seems to bring them closer together.  Especially when their favorite teacher gives them an assignment on "urban myths". Violet and Cora decide to work together, but the school has a motto of no child left behind, so  to speak... like, if you don't have a place to sit for lunch,  you'll be added to a table so the teacher adds Jordyn to their group.

What happens after that is the core of the story. working together, Jordyn belittles Violet and Cora's ideas and suggests a much more sinister subject. This subject begins to ensnare the girls as they research the back story and make plans that include a sleepover.

This is the first of  Ms. Gudenkauf's books that I've read (or listened to!) and it was excellent. There is a reveal that is a bit surprising but I give nothing away! You will have to read (or listen to!) this story to find out what happens!

I Spy: "Woman in the Window" by A. J. Finn

Anna Fox lives alone in a large house in a NY Harlem neighborhood with a small park that separates her from the neighbors across the way. She likes a glass of wine, or a few bottles of wine, and spends her days watching classic black and white noir mystery films and spying on her neighbors through a long camera lens. Very "Rear Window". Though instead of a broken leg keeping her housebound, she suffers from crippling agoraphobia.

A former child psychologist, she keeps in touch with her therapist mentor and has home visits from a  a physical therapist who is helping her recover from a mysterious accident and who has become a confidant. She does have a tenant who lives in her basement apartment, and he comes and goes and once in a while helps her out. Other than him and her cat, she really doesn't see anyone else. Her husband and daughter seem to stay in touch only by phone, so when a young teenage boy knocks at her door  with a gift from his mother, she is surprised but intrigued by his precociousness and interest in the movies she watches. After all, she specialized in damaged children, and there seemed to be something this boy was hiding.  He mentioned a strict father. Abuse perhaps?  And then, one afternoon, his mother pays her a visit. They get along and even play chess... and then, she seems to disappear.  Or did she. What did  Anna see through her camera lens? Something so horrible, it couldn't be real, could it? This is a thriller that will keep you up late reading (or listening) as you wonder if Anna is hallucinating or a witness to a crime.

This was another book I listened to while illustrating a book and it kept me listening even after my work for the day was finished. The audio is narrated by Ann Marie Lee who does a great job of bringing these characters to life and keeping the mystery alive to the very end. I have to say, as a long time fan of the movies Mr. Finn describes, he knows his genre! If you haven't seen the movies Ms. Fox watches over and over, you'll be searching for ways to stream them after you finish the book!