so-soI got this from my book club‘s mystery Christmas book exchange. It was an OK read but I felt the writing had a tendency to be too repetitive, and some of the events felt too obviously like plot devices. Maybe I‘m just too cynical for ghost stories!
Book 10/60 #Read2025 @DieAReader
#LetterH #LitsyAtoZ @Texreader
so-soThis was…weird. Not scary, not even creepy, but disturbing. There‘s a short prologue that happens 100 years ago, then the bulk of the book that‘s 15 years ago, then the last 35ish pages in present time (relative, since the book was written in the late 70s). I think I read most of the book like 🤨.
And I have to say every time the town, Port Arbello, is mentioned, all I could think of was portobello mushrooms.
so-so10 years before: four students disappear whilst on a school trip. They were supposed to complete a short orienteering challenge using a map & compass & passing various checkpoints, but Nathan Brookes, the teacher who was supposed to be keeping an eye on them went to talk to his secret girlfriend, & three of the four have not been seen since. (continued)
panBook club choice. I don‘t know how I feel about this story. It had the potential to be spooky; mother in law who killed herself haunting her son and wife-in-law. Barely got that, instead this odd obsession of said wife with pregnancy and whatever that was about making the old lady her baby. I know it was supposed to be about mother issues, but it just didn‘t click for me, at all. Just kept dragging on to me, not making sense.
Gotta say, I don't know if choosing to abandon all connection and dissolve into the universe and become a higher being is a great choice to make at 32 either
#HauntedShelf @PuddleJumper #HexesandCrows @Catsandbooks #BookRecommendations #Critters
1. The Hatchling- I felt things crawling on me for days after reading this one. So creepy!
2. Devolution- who doesn't enjoy a good Sasquatch book.
3. Infested- this novella will make you never want to leave your house for fear of being bitten by insects.
4. Stinger- great critter tale about a being from another planet causing trouble in a small Texas town.
I realize that, if I'm lucky, I will continue to get older than a lot of the leads in genre fiction, but please: don't get yourself killed by ghosts before you're even 32! It's not worth it!
