Bark At The Ghouls

Another fun read by David Sodergren. My 2 Cents for Free! The Haar by David Sodergren Released May 2022 Source: Spotify Listen See more @ Goodreads Aww this turned out to be a sweet monster romance with a bunch of gore and features the best salty older woman main character I've read in a good long while. When a company terrorizes a small town of people into leaving their beloved homes so they can build a disgusting money-making venture on the beautiful land, only one old woman named Muriel who is armed with something that's dragged itself out of the sea, fights back and it's gloriously gruesome. This was great fun. If you hate corporations that care more about profit than people and the environment, despise Richie Rich entitled men and love a good old fashioned love story this is a book for you. Final Rating:   ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2 Publisher Plot Synopsis  “I don’t fear death... but they do.” Muriel McAuley has lived in the Scottish fishing village of Witchaven all her life. She w...

Dummies meet ancient monsters and chaos ensues! My 2 Cents for Free! The Forgotten Island by David Sodergren Released October 2018 Source: TBR Pile See more @ Goodreads I’m pretty sure I’m finished with ARC reading for a good long while (once I finish my last one, that is). You people can have at ‘em. They have put me in a slump for the last time. I have a ton of books sitting here that have been sitting here for years and years collecting dust and sadness because I keep thinking I need to read the newest books for some ridiculous reason. I started reading The Forgotten Island while also reading some ARC’s and had to keep putting this down to finish those first when all I really wanted to do was finish this one. My family bought this for me when it was first released in 2018. 8 damn years ago. Ugh. Anyhow, don’t be me. Read the books you’ve been gifted and the books that you own instead of forcing yourself to read books because you feel like you have to. These slightly older releases n...

Haunting and well-paced and great on audio. Finally, a book that lived up to its blurb! My 2 Cents for Free! Arrowood by Laura McHugh Released June 2016 Source: Library Borrow See more @ Goodreads This was a great atmospheric, slow burn story about a family that is destroyed when their twin toddlers are kidnapped. Arden was only a child when her sisters disappeared and were never found and her family became forever fractured. She left them alone only for a moment and was a child herself and swears she saw a gold car drive away with them. But memories are tricky things. She returns to the childhood estate she's inherited and tries to rebuild a new life while reconnecting with old friends (and new) but finds herself digging further into the past and ends up unearthing devastating secrets. Everything is done so well here. The pacing, the messy complicated characters, the mystery, the trauma. It's definitely a good book to dig into on a hot summer day. I don't know how I missed...

This is a great horror/romance/dark fantasy blend. My 2 Cents for Free! Untethering Dark by Desirée M. Niccoli Released February 2026 Source: Netgalley See more @  Goodreads This was a lovely monster romance that was genuinely horrific, but also slightly cozy and even a little sweet without ever feeling cheesy. That’s the combo I’m always looking for in a horrormance/monster romance but it’s a hard balancing act and this author managed to do it. The plot is also well plotted. I know, I have a way with words, haha. A lot of these types of stories tend to lack a substantial plot in lieu of the characters getting together and then it’s usually dropped once the romance gets going but that doesn’t happen here. It reads like a dark fairytale with some splashes of horror, and it might not be for everyone because it does get gory, the characters are morally gray and there is some animal brutality. Fortunately, the animal deaths are not tossed in for shock value and make a lot of sense in t...

This was such a fun romance especially for an X-Files fan. My 2 Cents for Free! Love and Other Conspiracies by Mallory Marlowe Released August 2024 Source: Library Borrow See more @  Goodreads This was adorable and I would read these types of romances all day, every day if I could find more. It's fun, it's sweet, it's super cute and it has the Mulder/Scully dynamic going for it from the first meeting. The third act scared me because I despise that kind of thing (I'm being vague so not spoilering this review) but it's short lived, thank all the gods and dogs. There's also a cat here named Cthulu. Books need more of those, imo. I'd recommend reading it if you want something light and fun and who doesn't need a little bit of both? Final Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐1/2 Publisher Plot Synopsis  The hardest thing for a paranormal conspiracy theorist and a web series producer to believe in is finding love in this swoony debut romantic comedy. Hallie Barrett's life has i...

So much has changed,  yet so little has changed. Le Sigh. My 2 Cents for Free! The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke Released October 2022 Source: Purchased Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads This is my favorite of the three CJ Cooke books I've read. The other two were The Lighthouse Witches and The Book of Witching . I think I gave them both a three. One of them had two timelines which is sometimes tricky when they don't connect for the majority of the story. It often drives me nuts but that wasn't a problem at all in this one. The timelines here are only a few years apart and they meld somewhere at the midway point.  The Ghost Woods tells the story of several young women who are sent "away" when their pregnancies become an inconvenience that their families just want to shove under the rug. Why is society always so awful to women? Ugh. Anyhow, sometimes they're allowed back but more often than not, especially for the ones without means, they'r...

Unique and timely. This is a good one! My 2 Cents for Free! Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker Released January 2025 Source: Purchased @  Aardvark Book Club Get it at your local library or see more @  Goodreads A little mystery, a little tragedy and a whole lot of horrors await a small group of crime scene cleaners as they wield their way through the early days of the Covid pandemic. A world that often feels overtaken by hatefulness and prejudice. As of this day (sometime in November of 2025), we are still dealing with Covid mutations and all of the mess and selfishness it has wrought out into the open, so I was a little wary of reading a novel about a time that still feels like a festering open wound. I feared it would be too depressing and turns out it was but yet it really wasn't, and I credit that to the storytelling and characterization. Cora Zeng is the main character and she's lonely and closed off and dealing with trauma but as the story moves a...

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...

Just in case you haven't heard of this one, I decided to post a retro review 😀 I reread this in 2017 or around then, I think. My GR dates are all out of wack since they did that facelift ages ago. Anyhow, I never did get around to posting it here so here it is. About the Book It by Stephen King Released September 1986 Source: Library Borrow Goodreads  | Amazon Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real. They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lu...

If you like creepy crawly B movie horror comedies (and why wouldn't you?!) give this one a go. Bee Tornado by Chris Sorensen Released July 2023 Source: Received for review consideration Goodreads  | Amazon Derek Stratton, a broke and widowed storm chaser, is trying his best to support his daughter Mel. Their lives take a dangerous turn when a colossal tornado releases a swarm of prehistoric bees from the Colorado soil, plunging them into a treacherous fight for survival. Derek finds an unexpected partnership with an eccentric bee expert and his sister-in-law, a local cop. Together, they embark on a harrowing race against the clock to rescue Mel from the Bee Tornado. My 2 Cents for Free! Please keep these wild creature features coming! Sometimes a reader (me, okay, it’s me) wants something creepy crawly, sorta ridiculous but maybe completely plausible too . . . Bee Tornado is all of these things and just like Suckerville , the pages fly! Things start off when two young dudes decide ...

This is a great addition to your gothic fiction collection! The September House by Carissa Orlando Released September 2023 Source: Library Borrow Goodreads  | Amazon A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel. When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people. Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her miss...

This was fantastic on audio! It almost made me look forward to housework.   Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison Released September 2023 Source: Library Borrow Goodreads  | Amazon A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle. Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep. Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it me...

Just like Rumfitt's previous book, this book will upset you. Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt Released October 2023 Source: Received for Review Consideration Goodreads   | Amazon From Alison Rumfitt, the author of Tell Me I’m Worthless — “a triumph of transgressive queer horror” (Publishers Weekly) — comes Brainwyrms, a searing body horror novel of obsession, violence and pleasure. When a transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, fucking strangers, pushing away her friends. Then she meets Vanya. Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya. The two hit it off immediately, but as their relationship intensifies, so too does Frankie’s feeling that Vanya is hiding something from her. When Vanya’s secrets threaten to tear them apart, Frankie starts digging, and unearths a sinister, depraved conspiracy, the roots of which go deeper than she ever imagined. Shocking, ...

This book will upset you. Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt Released January 2023 Source: Received for Review Consideration Goodreads   | Amazon Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice’s life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go. Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own. My 2 Cents for Free! This book is extremely timely. It’s a scathing look at fascism, TERFism, and the complete lack of empathy that has become commonplace everywhere you...