Book Review: Am I Beautiful? by Jon Athan

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Title: Am I Beautiful?

Author: Jon Athan

Publication Date: February 15, 2021

Number of Pages: 298

Format: E-book

Publisher: Independent

Genre: Horror, Splatterpunk

Synopsis:

Adam Miller, a successful marketing manager at a travel agency, visits Tokyo, Japan on business. During his trip, he has a one-night stand with a young Japanese woman, Miki Someya. But Miki latches onto him. She follows him— stalks him —through the streets of Tokyo, professing her love and begging for his. Adam manages to avoid her, but he loses control of himself when she confronts him and threatens to follow him home to tell his wife about their affair. In a fit of drunken rage, Adam attacks her. He beats her black and blue, then he carves a smile on her face with a pair of shears.

Afraid and ashamed, he flees the country and escapes prosecution. But years later, when children start vanishing in his city and the only suspect is a woman with a scarred face, he suspects his past has followed him home… Inspired by a classic urban legend, Jon Athan, the author of Lovesick and Maneater , brings you a disturbing new vision of sadistic romance. This novel contains graphic content. Reader discretion is advised. Continue reading

Book Review: My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward by Mark Lukach

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Title: My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

Author: Mark Lukach

Publication Date: May 2, 2017

Number of Pages: 320

Format: Audiobook

Publisher: Harper Wave

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Mental Illness

Synopsis:

A heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love.

Mark and Giulia’s life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended.

A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach’s is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife’s mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers’ faith in the power of love. Continue reading

Stuff I’ve Been Reading Lately #35

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BOOKS READ:

  • Mommy Dearest by Willow Rose
  • Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
  • I’m Not Sam by Jack Ketchum
  • My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward by Mark Lukach
  • Am I Beautiful? by Jon Athan
  • Magnum Opus by Caitlin Marceau
  • My Mother’s Eyes by Jeremy Ray
  • The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
  • Nibble, Nibble, Crunch by Willow Rose
  • The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer by Liza Rodman

BOOKS BOUGHT:

  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  • Trickery by Roald Dahl
  • Deception by Roald Dahl
  • Lust by Roald Dahl
  • Cruelty by Roald Dahl
  • War by Roald Dahl
  • Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
  • Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
  • Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
  • Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
  • The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  • Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
  • A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin
  • The Chocolate Lover’s Wedding by Carole Matthews
  • The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  • The Half Sister by Sadie Jones
  • The Staycation by Cressida McLaughlin
  • Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors
  • The Other Mrs. Miller by Allison Dickson
  • The Rising by Mira Grant

BOOKS RECEIVED:

  • The Outsider by Albert Camus
  • Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
  • Two Wrongs Make a Right by Chloe Leise
  • Madness by Roald Dahl
  • Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

Continue reading

Book Review: I’m Not Sam by Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee

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Title: I’m Not Sam

Author: Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee

Publication Date: January 1, 2012

Number of Pages: 127

Format: E-book

Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications

Genre: Horror, Psychological Thriller

Synopsis:

Now I’m way beyond confusion.

Now I’m scared.

I’ve slid down the rabbit-hole and what’s down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she’s having. She’s changed, somehow overnight. I don’t know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you’d thread a belt through the loops of your jeans.

And now I’m shivering too.

In some fundamental way she’s changed… Continue reading

Book Review: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

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Title: Dark Matter

Author: Blake Crouch

Publication Date: July 26, 2016

Number of Pages: 352

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Sci-Fi

Synopsis:

A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

“Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human–a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of. Continue reading

Book Review: Mommy Dearest by Willow Rose

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Title: Mommy Dearest

Author: Willow Rose

Publication Date: July 12, 2017

Number of Pages: 118

Format: E-book

Publisher: Amazon

Genre: Thriller

Synopsis:

Do you really know your mother-in-law? A Spine-chilling Horror novella from the Queen of Scream
We all know a relationship with your mother-in-law can be quite tricky from time to time. We jokingly call them things like Monster-in-law. However, sometimes, there is actual truth to that joke, isn’t there? Some of them do act like true monsters, don’t they?

When Crystal meets her future mother-in-law for the first time, she is excited. She knows it might be a challenge to have her live with them for an entire month, but still. It’s an old woman we’re talking about here. How much trouble can she cause?

Mommy Dearest is a short story thriller from the Amazon #1 Best Selling author Willow Rose. It will NOT improve your relationship with your mother-in-law. Continue reading

Book Review: The Things He Heard by Matt Shaw

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Title: The Things He Heard

Author: Matt Shaw

Publication Date: November 25, 2022

Number of Pages: 68

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Independent

Genre: Horror

Synopsis:

A tragic, violent

The boy didn’t have cancer. He had something else buried deep within which he named “his Cancer”. Others didn’t know it was there, even though he tried telling them. Instead, they said he was “fine” and being “silly” and “melodramatic”. Even when his anger turned to frustration and streams of tears, they continued to say he was okay. He knew he wasn’t though and, the more they doubted him and didn’t listen, the more the “cancer” grew.

He could feel it inside and, it scared him. He knew that, one day, it was going to explode. What he didn’t know was who would be caught up in the explosion.

From award-winning author Matt Shaw, the author of Sick B*stards, The Octopus Trilogy and Roe V. Wade. Continue reading

Book Review: The Boy From the Woods (Wilde, #1) by Harlan Coben

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Title: The Boy From the Woods (Wilde, #1)

Author: Harlan Coben

Publication Date: March 1, 2020

Number of Pages: 384

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Century

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

Synopsis:

Thirty years ago, a child was found in the woods. He had been living a feral existence, with no memory of how he got there or even who he is. Everyone just calls him Wilde.

Now another child has gone missing – Naomi Pine – who may be playing some sort of disappearing game. No one seems concerned about her whereabouts, not even her father.

No one – except criminal attorney Hester Crimstein, whose grandson knows Naomi is being bullied badly at school and is concerned for her safety. Hester is determined to find Naomi so she calls Wilde – now ex-military and an expert in security issues – and asks him to track her down.

But even Wilde can’t find Naomi. One day passes, then another, then a third.

Four days later a finger shows up in the mail.

And Wilde knows that what may have started as a game has now spiralled into something far, far darker… Continue reading

Book Review: The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth

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Title: The Mother-in-Law

Author: Sally Hepworth

Publication Date: January 29, 2019

Number of Pages: 352

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Macmillan Australia

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

Synopsis:

From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm’s length. Diana is exquisitely polite, but Lucy knows, even after marrying Oliver, that they’ll never have the closeness she’d been hoping for.

But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.

That was ten years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something…

From the bestselling author of The Family Next Door comes a new page-turner about that trickiest of relationships. Continue reading

Book Review: Spare by Prince Harry

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Title: Spare

Author: Prince Harry

Publication Date: January 10, 2023

Number of Pages: 410

Format: Audiobook
Publisher: Random House

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

Synopsis:

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.

For Harry, this is that story at last.

Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight.

At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn’t find true love.

Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple’s cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. . . .

For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief. Continue reading