Wicked Little Things by Adam Ickes

 

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘
Genre - Horror
Format - Paperback
Length - 110 pages


*Amazon Blurb*

100 tiny tales of terror gave birth to 100 monstrosities. The time has come for 100 more tales of terrible things to haunt your dreams and drive home a healthy dose of fear of those horrible creatures that dwell mostly in the darkness, but sometimes in the light. Devour these Wicked Little Things in one sitting if you think your fragile mind can handle it, or drink them in one at a time and let your fright strangle your sanity as the fear really sinks in and takes hold.

*My Review* 

 

100 short stories. Some of these left me wanting more and wishing they were a novel and not just a short story. Others I didn't really understand at all. Mostly it was just a nice quick read without my mind trying to guess who did what to who and if they'll get caught.

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Psychological Thriller, Ghost Thriller, Horror
Format - Hardcover
Length - 384 pages


*Amazon Blurb*

What was it like? Living in that house.
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father's death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.
Alternating between Maggie’s uneasy homecoming and chapters from her father’s book, Home Before Dark is the story of a house with long-buried secrets and a woman’s quest to uncover them—even if the truth is far more terrifying than any haunting.

*My Review* 

 

If you've been keeping up with my blog then you'll know that suspense/thriller/horror are my favorite types of books. When someone asks what my favorite book is, I'll ask them what genre because it's different for each. This book.... OMG .....seriously! This is my favorite horror/thriller book of all time right now. I couldn't read it fast enough.

I enjoyed how it went back and forth from what Maggie's dad wrote in his book to her current situation. I couldn't tell if the house was really haunted, who the ghosts were or what. It seemed like every chapter held a surprise that I hadn't been expecting. There were a few times that I thought I knew what someone was up to or who "did what", only to be thrown off by the next chapter. I was reading so fast that sometimes I didn't have time to make a guess, nor did I want to. I just wanted to get to the end to have it all make sense. And WOW did it ever. It's not until the very end and I was totally shocked.

In My Father's Basement by T.J. Payne

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Horror, Suspense, Fiction
Format - E-book
Length - 943 KB

*Amazon Blurb*

Out of nowhere, a retired 60-year old handyman goes on a murder-spree, abducting healthy young people and torturing them with hand-tools.

After he's caught, a media fascination in The Handyman swells. People want to know why he snapped. They want to hear ALL the grisly details.

But he'll only tell his gruesome story to one person-- His estranged son.

*My Review* 

This book was straight crazy....just like the killer.
What makes a helpful and quiet elderly man go on a killing spree? You'll have to ask his son, Isaac, to find out because he refuses to say anything to anyone other than him. Issac wants nothing to do with his father though, now more than ever. Since the murders, his life has been even harder than it was. He can't find a job because he not only shares the same last name of his father, but he looks just like him. Eventually a deal is presented to Issac that can make him quite a bit of money. All he needs to do is listen to his fathers story. Of course, it's never that easy.

All Roads End Here by David Moody

All Roads End Here

by David Moody

Availble on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘
Genre - Dystopian, Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Horror
Format - Paperback
Length - 352 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

It’s taken Matthew Dunne almost three months to get home. Never more than a few meters from the Haters at any time, every single step has been fraught with danger. But he’s made it.
In his absence, his home city has become a sprawling, walled-off refugee camp. But the camp–and the entire world beyond its borders–is balanced on a knife-edge. During his time in the wilderness, Matt developed a skill which is in high demand: the ability to anticipate and predict Hater behavior. It’s these skills that will thrust him into a web of subterfuge and danger. As the pressure mounts inside the camp, he finds himself under scrutiny from all sides.
He’s always done his best to avoid trouble, but sometimes it can’t be helped. The shit’s about to hit the fan, and this time Matt’s right at the epicenter.


*My Review* 

I was introduced to David Moody when I read his book One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning. That book had me hooked right away. Unfortunately I didn't realize it was part of a series and of course I had read them out of order. Lucky for me it didn't matter and so I was super excited to read the next in the series.

My expectations were short lived. I hate leaving less that decent reviews on a book, but honestly this one felt like the horror version of Lord of the Ring. There was tons of walking. Tons of taking in the surroundings and staying out of trouble. It just wasn't what I had thought it would have been after reading the prequel.

Sorry David.

Asylum by Madeleine Roux

Asylum

by Madeleine Roux

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘
Genre - Teen & Young Adult, Fantasy, Supernatural, Mystery, Thrillers, Horror
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 310

*Amazon Blurb*

For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, the New Hampshire College Prep program is the chance of a lifetime. Except that when Dan arrives, he finds that the usual summer housing has been closed, forcing students to stay in the crumbling Brookline Dorm—formerly a psychiatric hospital. As Dan and his new friends Abby and Jordan start exploring Brookline's twisty halls and hidden basement, they uncover disturbing secrets about what really went on here . . . secrets that link Dan and his friends to the asylum's dark past. Because Brookline was no ordinary mental hospital, and there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.

*My Review* 

I think this was a good horror book for young adults. I did enjoy the book, right up until the end. The fact that an old asylum was turned into a college was a great story-line itself. It screams haunted. I mean what teenager wouldn't want to go and stay at an old asylum?
The story flows nicely with the kids meeting up and the trouble they get into. To me it just seemed that with all the secrets hidden beneath the dorms it should have led to more. I was really expecting more "excitement".
The ending seemed a bit rushed too. Maybe it has to do with the fact that this is the first in the series of 3. Overall a good book and I might look into the rest of the series.

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Bird Box

by Josh Malerman

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Horror, Suspense, Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction
Format - Audio-book

*Amazon Blurb*

Something is out there . . . Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from. Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now, that the boy and girl are four, it is time to go. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them. But is it man, animal, or monster? Engulfed in darkness, surrounded by sounds both familiar and frightening, Malorie embarks on a harrowing odyssey—a trip that takes her into an unseen world and back into the past, to the companions who once saved her. Under the guidance of the stalwart Tom, a motely group of strangers banded together against the unseen terror, creating order from the chaos. But when supplies ran low, they were forced to venture outside—and confront the ultimate question: in a world gone mad, who can really be trusted?

*My Review* 

I didn't watch the show on Netflix and I think it made the book even better. Since the characters in the book are unable to look at anything, they rely on other senses. That means that everything they can't see is described to you. For me, this made it easy to picture everything without having to think about it. The layout of the house, the path to the well, the ride down the river....everything was so vivid in my mind. I also enjoyed how the book alternates between the past and present. It kept things moving nicely. The author has them switching at the perfect point.

There was only part of the story that I wished was elaborated on a little more and that was where Malorie got the food to survive for 4 years. Did she leave the babies home while she went out and got more food? How was she able to find that much to last for so long? Regardless, she did and they survived.

Pratts Hollow by Christina Kelley

Pratts Hollow

by Christina Kelley

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘
Genre - Horror, Suspense
Format - Paperback
Pages - 301

*Amazon Blurb*

A disturbing Tale of Horror and Suspense set in the Hamlet of Pratts Hollow, NY located in the Mohawk Valley. This novel isn't coated in sugar for the meek, because real life rarely is frosted. With the good, comes the bad, the stagnant, and the unimaginable. A story about the horrors of small town living; real and perceived; hidden and apparent. When Maurice Adam Downey arrives in Pratts Hollow, the air gets heavy, stomachs sour, surrounding woods turn putrid, neighbors' doors close extra tight, and the uncontrollable madness begins... Maurice Adam Downey, a supernatural cult leader migrates from the deep woods of Canada to arrive in the hamlet of Pratts Hollow in the 1990's. His presence creates mayhem as horrific events plague the citizens within the rural farming communities of Pratts Hollow and Madison. Five Madison Central School students and long time friends, Tommy Tremaine, Sarah Jensen, Lane Collins, Samantha Peate, and Bobby Frye form a club called the Country Club Five in which its members encounter Maurice Downey on a daily basis. The children recognize the evil within this new stranger and the unusual happenings that have occurred in their towns since his arrival. With the help of a wise old woman, divine intervention, a New York City detective, a Utica Police sergeant, and the impenetrable friendship between each other, the friends battle this cruel being to save a missing five year old girl, and their hometowns. "This novel isn't coated in sugar for the meek, because real life rarely is frosted."--Christina Kelley. Christina incorporates her fictional characters into real locations and settings in Oneida, and Madison County, including the City of Utica. .

*My Review* 

I always enjoy reading books that are set in an area that is local to me. Pratts Hollow, as well as Utica, are both located very close to me. Utica is a 15 to 20 minute drive.

First, let me start of by saying that poor editing can take away from a good book...as was the case here. I found the beginning of the book to be quite interesting, but the author would go off on side stories that didn't quite fit in or were just distracting from the main story-line.

A group of kids that are best friends get tattoos which someone give them super powers that they aren't really aware of. Then they graduate school and move away. Events in their hometown bring them all back together and they find out how strong their powers really are.

The ending of the book was a disappointment. The buildup of how horrible the Downey's were made me think that the ending would be full of action. Instead it was all over in the matter of a couple pages.

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

Hallow City

The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

by Ransom Riggs

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘 📘📘 📘📘
Genre - Teen & Young Adult, Time Travel, Fiction, Horror, Fantasy
Format - Audiobook

*Amazon Blurb*

Like its predecessor, this second novel in the Peculiar Children series blends thrilling fantasy with vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them—but she’s trapped in the body of a bird. The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom.

*My Review* 

I haven't even had a chance to write my review and I've already downloaded Library of Souls: The Third Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children.

This is such a fun series. Reading about the adventures these children (are they actually children?) go on. They come across the most unusual things and wonder how they can possibly be real, while they themselves are unusual.

In this book the unusual children are trying to save Miss Peregrine as she's stuck in her bird form and if not changed back she will remain. The children fight through all sorts of obstacles to try and save their beloved Miss Peregrine.

The ending did come as quite a surprise and I can't wait to dive into the next book and find out what is going to happen.

The Cabin At The End Of The World by Paul Tremblay

The Cabin At The End Of The World

by Paul Tremblay

Availble on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘
Genre - Supernatural Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Horror, Fiction
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 244

*Amazon Blurb*

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.
One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."
Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.


*My Review* 

This book left me feeling incomplete....not like way you feel when you finished a book in a series, but like the book was written before it was fully thought thru. I will say that the author does an amazing job at describing the the scenes, but not the actual reason for what is going on in the book. I get that the "strangers" have come to the cabin to do what they have to or as they put it "what is necessary". This is what I can't get past. Why is it necessary? There was a little backstory about how they came to be together, but I either didn't follow it, don't remember it or the author failed at that point in the story. I am completely lost about the why of the story.

Wen, who I thought was going to be one of the main characters of the story after the beginning ends up seeming to be more of a space filler than anything.

Then ending also left me feeling incomplete. I mean is there going to be another book? Overall I just didn't care for this at all.

There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

There's Someone Inside Your House 

by Stephanie Perkins

Available On Amazon

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘
Genre - Teen, Romance, Thriller, Suspense, Horror
Format - Audio
Approx Listening Length - 9 hrs 26 min

*Amazon Blurb* 

One by one, the students of Osborne High are dying in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasing and grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and the hunt intensifies for the killer, the dark secrets among them must finally be confronted.

*Review*

It's nice to have finally found an audio book that I could listen to. You never realize how important a narrator is until you are trying to listen to someone talk for hours.

This was a good book that flowed nicely. It was easy to follow who the characters were and what was going on...a series of murders. The main characters, Makani and Ollie, seemed to have quite a realistic teenage relationship who also harbored secrets. Could one of them be committing these murders, and why? Although there were a couple characters who I thought might be the murderer, at the same time I didn't think it was them because it was too easy. It also seemed there was no connection between the murders. I was surprised about who the killer turned out to be.

Undead Girl Gang by Lilly Anderson

Undead Girl Gang

by Lilly Anderson

Available On Amazon

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘
Genre - Teen, Horror, Zombie
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 305

*Amazon Blurb* 

Meet teenage Wiccan Mila Flores, who truly could not care less what you think about her Doc Martens, her attitude, or her weight because she knows that, no matter what, her BFF Riley is right by her side. So when Riley and Fairmont Academy mean girls June Phelan-Park and Dayton Nesseth die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone's explanation that her BFF was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to uncover the truth: she brings the girls back to life.
Unfortunately, Riley, June, and Dayton have no recollection of their murders. But they do have unfinished business to attend to. Now, with only seven days until the spell wears off and the girls return to their graves, Mila must wrangle the distracted group of undead teens and work fast to discover their murderer...before the killer strikes again.

*Review*

What do you do when you best friend dies and everyone is claiming it was part of some suicide pat she has with two other girls that weren't even her friends? You bring her back from the dead to ask of course. But when you're young and not really sure of how to use magic things don't always go as planned. That's exactly what happened with Mila. Not only did she bring back her best friends, who can't remember any details about her death, but also June and Dayton who aren't even in the same clique.
Not there are three dead girls running around while Mila is trying to help them figure out why they died. Was school so bad that they couldn't take it anymore? Did someone hate them that much? All the questions that Mila has and the girls (especially June and Dayton) seem to care less about getting answers.
I thought this book was cute, but not much more than that. It's not easy to guess right in the beginning if the girls committed suicide or if they were murdered, but it also doesn't take long to figure it all out, thought a little longer to know all the details.
The ending seemed to drag on a bit longer than needed, but overall I still enjoyed it.

The Dead House by Billy O'Callaghan

The Dead House

by Billy O'Callaghan

Available On Amazon

 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘
Genre - Ghosts, Horror, Supernatural
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 202

*Blurb* 
This best-selling debut by an award-winning writer is both an eerie contemporary ghost story and a dread-inducing psychological thriller. Maggie is a successful young artist who has had bad luck with men. Her last put her in the hospital and, after she’s healed physically, left her needing to get out of London to heal mentally and find a place of quiet that will restore her creative spirit. On the rugged west coast of Ireland, perched on a wild cliff side, she spies the shell of a cottage that dates back to Great Famine and decides to buy it. When work on the house is done, she invites her dealer to come for the weekend to celebrate along with a couple of women friends, one of whom will become his wife. On the boozy last night, the other friend pulls out an Ouija board. What sinister thing they summon, once invited, will never go.
Ireland is a country haunted by its past. In Billy O'Callaghan's hands, its terrible beauty becomes a force of inescapable horror that reaches far back in time, before the Famine, before Christianity, to a pagan place where nature and superstition are bound in an endless knot.


*Review*
The Dead House was a dead book to me. I was quite disappointed throughout the whole book. It start off with the main character, Mike, describing Ireland in great detail. I'm not saying that explaining the land wasn't important, but I don't think it needed to take that much of the book before it really started to get interesting. Then it was only interesting for a few pages before it went back to Mike describing the land, his life, feelings and all that. It did pick back up again toward the ending only to, once more, last a few pages. The book was a slight love story, but without all the sappy romance that some books have with a slight twist of ghosts.

I would've given only a 1 book rating but instead gave 2 because I do want to give credit to the detail that the author uses to describe the scenery and feelings he has, but I think that he spent too much time doing that and not enough time on the ghost parts that could've made the story awesome.

One Of Us Will Be Dead By Morning by David Moody

One Of Us Will Be Dead By Morning

by David Moody

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Horror
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 330


I wasn't sure I wanted to start this book as it's the 4th in the Hater Series and I haven't read the previous 3. However, I got it in my PageHabit horror subscription box*, and figured why not.

The first chapter had me wondering if I was going to like it at all. I thought it was going to be a book about a bunch of kids getting into trouble. I was wrong. The bodies start to drop right in the beginning and don't stop throughout the entire book. There were lots of different characters and I don't care for trying to remember who is who, but it didn't matter in this book, especially when people are dying off left and right. It's a modern day alternative to zombies as the "Haters" aren't actually zombies. I thought the name "Haters", for the changed people, wasn't a good choice. For some reason, it seemed a bit childish to me (sorry). I did enjoy how there was no real hero though. It makes trying to figure out who will survive harder. Everyone was out for themselves.

If you enjoy blood and gore then this is the book for you. The author is quite descriptive and I was able to visualize every gruesome attack. The book is easy to read and I like how it is wrote in a day by day view, instead of just a random timeline. This made is a quicker read for me as I wanted to get through an entire "day" in the book before I stopped reading. I would consider this book a page turner. I kept reading to find out who was going to be the next to die, would anyone make it off the island, and who (if anyone) would survive.

I am going to look for the first 3 in the series because I am curious if there is a reason as to why people became Haters. Was it something in the air, the water what? And if I read the first 3 and there's no explanation, then I will look forward to another in the series to find out what happens.

 Available on Amazon & Book Depository

Random Author Annote pg. 207 "Remember this from Hater? When someone tells you "the situation is under control", you can be sure it isn't.

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*PageHabit  provides exclusive book subscription boxes featuring author-annotated new release books in a variety of popular genres including Literary Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction and more. They deliver the best new book releases to your door and bundle them with exclusive author insight, including written annotations, bookish goods, and an active reading community to boot.

Sleepwalker: A Keyhole Novel by Sarah A. Kenney

Sleepwalker: A Keyhole Novel 

by Sarah A. Kenney 

 Author Requested Review

(Find out more about requesting a review here)

📘📘📘📘📘
(5 out of 5 book rating)

Sleepwalker: A Keyhole Novel (The Keyhole Novels Book 1) by Sarah A. Kenney is a short story that will keep you wanting more. Right from the first couple pages I wanted to read this book and do nothing else. When I started reading I wanted to know what the "accident" was that had happened and why it was so hard to get passed. There is never a moment of relaxing. I feel so bad for the main character, Ashley, who seems to go from one bad event in her life to another. This girl can't seem to ever catch a break. It was so well written that I had no trouble envisioning everything that was happening and to me that is very important for a book.
The ending was just the I like and hate them. I always want books to end because I hate being left wondering, but isn't that the point when your an author. Leave the readers wanting more so they will get the next book? That's exactly the case with this one. Just when you think it's over....surprise! And the surprises just keep coming. I actually finished the book and sat there saying whoa, why, how and mostly what?
I feel as though I should write more for this review, but at the same time if I do I might give away the story. Just trust me. If you love short stories, thriller and horror books, this is a definite read.