Bark At The Ghouls

This started out amazing but lost me along the way.  My 2 Cents for Free! Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou Released April 2025 Source: Purchased from local indie bookstore Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads Sour Cherry is a retelling of the murderous Bluebeard, he of the penchant for collecting and murdering wives. He's no different here. The story starts out when he's just a "little lord". He's an odd child, whose nails grow at a frightening pace, and he can't seem to fit in with the other children. His wetnurse cares for him when no one else can quite bring themselves to. Is he an evil seed, is he truly cursed or is it the lack of nurturing? We shall never know but as the story goes along any sympathy I was able to dredge up for him was soon lost. The book has some beautiful language, but the story is oddly composed. It takes its time getting started. We get to know Bluebeard as that strange child I mentioned above. This section is a goo...

This wasn't quite what I was expecting which was actually a nice surprise. My 2 Cents for Free! The Undoing of Violet Claybourne by Emily Critchley Released November 2024 Source: Library Audio Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads I picked this up from the library thinking it was a gothic mystery and, though it features a once fine manor that is in disrepair, it’s definitely a historical tale of friendship and tragedy and secrets that ultimately is mainly about young women who weren’t free to live their lives as they’d like due to their own mistakes and class wars but mostly because of the way society is set up to give young women very little agency in their own lives and then there's the fact that mental health issues continue to be woefully dismissed. Whew, that was a mouthful. Fifteen-year-old Gillian befriends a friendless girl at the posh school she attends. She isn’t nearly as wealthy as the rest of her classmates and jumps at the chance to spend a holiday...

 A mini review for my archives My 2 Cents for Free! Wake Up And Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman Released January2025 Source: Library Audio Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads This was bleak and there’s a scene I’ll never forget early on but it’s definitely not a book I’d read again. It’s just too much with everything that’s going on here in the US. The audio is very good except for the repetitive kid baby ghost show iPad thing which got on my last nerve when it was in my ears over and over again but I’m sleep deprived and short of patience so you may have a different experience. It’d make a good companion read with CJ Leede’s new one, American Rapture, if you’re into delving into sex plagues and bumming yourself out. I borrowed this audiobook from my local library. Final Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐1/2 Publisher Plot Synopsis (if you need one, be warned because sometimes they can spoil it all!) From Vulture's "master of horror" Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless a...

This was very cute on audio. My 2 Cents for Free! First-Time Caller by B.K.Borison Released February 2025 Source: Library Audio Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads This was a cute romance between a single mom and the host of a late-night radio show that answers random questions from its audience about relationships. Who knew those still existed? I looked it up and apparently they do. You can learn something new every day, I guess. I loved Lucie. She's been focused on raising her daughter and works as a mechanic with a bunch of men. Her ex lives across the way with his husband (? I think they're married but my brain fails me) and they co-parent their 12-year-old. She gets her fill of men that way but one night, unbeknownst to her, her daughter calls into the radio show and sets off a series of events that ends up with Lucie going viral for being so openly honest and hopelessly romantic. She hits it off with the host and is offered up a chance to allow the show ...

Would you just look at the lovely cover! My 2 Cents for Free! The Lamb by Lucy Rose Released February 2025 Source: Purchased from local bookstore Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads Are you feeling a bit gloomy? Want to feel worse? I have a book rec for that. This book was the Horror Spotlight discord pick for May and it took me all of May (and a few days of June) to force myself through it. If I weren’t so damn nosy and stubborn I might’ve done a dnf. And I nearly did but after reading the spoilers in the chat I had to know how it all got there and I switched to audio to finish and then back to the physical book when I ran out of hours (curse you again Spotify and your weird plan to get more $ out of me with “top offs”). So even though it took me half my life to finish, it kept pulling me back in despite my threats to quit it. And in the end, I have no regrets about sticking with it. It’s a bleak story about a little cannibal family. Before someone screams that I...

I purchased a copy of Bad Dolls when Audible had a very good sale a little bit ago. 80% off? Thank you very much. Anyone read this one? My 2 Cents for Free! Bad Dolls by Rachel Harrison Released September 2022 Source: Audible Purchase Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads These stories are what I’d call “horror adjacent” so keep that in mind if you’re expecting the creepy crawlies. They’re more about complicated, messy women (Bad Dolls, I guess?) and their complicated relationships than they are about the trad horrors. But being a woman is sometimes a horror all in itself so there’s that. Reply Hazy, Try Again This is a tale about a woman who purchases a used 8 Ball and realizes her current relationship kind of sucks. Is the 8 Ball just being spicy or is it helping her out? I didn’t like any of these people and that’s ok but the story didn’t thrill me too much either. 2.5? Bachelorette This one drives home that some friendships really need to die a natural death. It...

Hello! I hope you're all doing well out there. It's been a bit since I've blogged and blogger went and fiddled with every one of my review photos and the whole thing looks wonky and it's going to have to stay that way because I CANNOT BE BOTHERED. I'm sticking with the bare bones and sticking the synopsis at the end because if I start fixing things I know I'll never blog again. So here I am back with a mini review of a good book I read last week. Have you read it? My 2 Cents for Free! Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen Released March 25, 2025 Source: Bought with my own $ Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads I thought this was a very good gothic story about how women had to tread carefully or fear being locked away by the men who claimed to love them but really only wanted to own them. Why can’t we lock up hysterical men? There’s a lot of them out there walking around and being a-holes who could do with a padded room and a daily dose of lau...

My 2 Cents for Free! The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter Released January 1979, 162 pgs Source: Bought with my own $ Goodreads  |  Amazon Eeek I don't know how to rate it. It's probably a 2 but one of the stories was a 4 and it was the longest so I'll go with a 3 for now. I've been wanting to read this book for ages. I bought a used copy years ago, promptly buried it under other books and about a decade later forgot about it and bought a new reprint. I also somehow ended up with a copy from Audible. Ugh, why do I do this? I should've loved this dark and haunting and beautifully written book but I also should've read it when I bought it the first time. I did not love this dark and haunting and beautifully written book much at all. I don't know if it just hasn't aged well or if I've read too many dark and haunting and beautifully written fairytale retellings but I was mostly bored and annoyed. The first story, The Bloody Chamber, started things off rig...

Le Sigh. The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer Released July 2024, 352 pgs Source: Purchased from Book of the Month Goodreads  |  Amazon Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game. As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived. Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy. Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth ab...

Well, I finished. Winter's Fury by A.E. Rayne Released July 2017, 738 pgs Source: Purchased from Audible Goodreads  | Amazon IN A WORLD RULED BY MEN, ONE WOMAN WILL RISE She was their greatest warrior; the daughter of the king. But her uncle stole the throne and sent her away to marry Eadmund, the drunken son of their worst enemy. Now she must pick up her sword again to restore her family’s honour and return to the home she loves. Despite her skill with a sword, her prowess in battle, and her reputation as the greatest warrior in Brekka, without her father to protect her, Jael was merely a pawn, a woman to be married off so her uncle could forge an alliance to fulfil his own desperate ambitions. Eadmund is broken hearted, tortured by the murder of his first wife, but his father had lost patience with him. He wanted heirs for his kingdom. He wanted his son back, restored to the fierce warrior he had once been. And when his daughter has a dream about Jael, the woman who would save h...

This is another great book I read a bit ago but never managed to get up on my blog. The Wild Dark by Katherine Silva Released October 2021 Source: Received for Review Consideration Goodreads  | Amazon Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Raleigh has lost everything: her job as a police detective, her partner, her fiancé, and her peace of mind. After a month of solitude at a cabin in the woods, she finally feels as though she’s ready to move on. But in one terrifying night, everything changes. Liz's partner, Brody, appears in the form of a ghost. He's one of millions that have returned to haunt their loved ones. Brody can't remember how he died and Liz is determined to keep the secret of it buried, for it means dredging up crushing memories. Along with him comes an unearthly forest purgatory that swallows up every sign of human civilization across the world. The woods are fraught with disturbing architecture and monstrous wolves hungry for human souls. Brody says he escaped from them and that t...

I read this a little bit ago but books don't expire and I'd like everyone to read it!  Inheriting Her Ghosts by S.H. Cooper Released July 2021 Source: My TBR Goodreads  | Amazon Inheritance often comes with strings attached, but rarely are they as tangled as those hanging over High Hearth. When Eudora Fellowes learns she's the sole heir of her estranged great-aunt's seaside manor, she believes it will be the peaceful escape she's longed for. What awaits, however, is a dark legacy shrouded in half a century of secrets, and it doesn't take long before Eudora realizes she's not the only one to call High Hearth home. My 2 Cents for Free! I read S.H. Cooper’s book The Festering Ones last year and enjoyed it quite a bit. It featured a strong protagonist who is fearless and determined to get to the root of the mysteries - even if she has to put herself at risk to do it. Inheriting Her Ghosts has another great heroine and it is very mysterious and ghostly and full...