My Pretties by Jeff Strand Audiobook Review

November 22, 2019

If you like dark humor with your horror you should read Jeff Strand!

My Pretties by Jeff Strand

Released June 2019

Dark Fiction | Goodreads | Amazon

Source: Received for Review Consideration

A novel of terror from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of PRESSURE.

A serial kidnapper is preying upon women. He abducts them, then locks them in one of the cages dangling from the ceiling in a soundproofed basement. There, he sits quietly and just watches them, returning night after night, hoping he'll be in the room at the moment his beautiful captives finally starve to death.

Charlene and Gertie have become fast friends at the restaurant where they work. But Charlene is concerned when she hears how her co-worker spends her evenings: Gertie's cousin is one of the missing, and Gertie wanders the city streets where many of the abductions took place, using herself as bait with a high-voltage stun gun in her pocket. Charlene reluctantly offers to trail her in a car, just in case she does lure the kidnapper and things go wrong.

Unfortunately, the women find themselves the source of unwanted fame. And now they're on the radar of a very, very dangerous man...

My 2 Cents For Free!

I’ve read a few Jeff Strand books and that man has one skewed sense of humor. I love it. He manages to make me laugh while I’m wincing at what’s occurring in the scene. That’s some talent there. If you have a dark sense of humor you should really check out some of Strand’s many works. He has written in several genres ranging from the road-trip romance Kumquat, the bizarro Facial, thriller Stalking You Now and a slew of straight up horror that you should seek out. My Pretties is as good a place as any to start though because you’ll get a good dose of his sarcasm and who doesn’t need some of that in their life?

This story is more one about the evils of man. And woman. Both are equally evil when they want to be and especially if they’re not wired quite right. It’s about the bad stuff humans do to each other. The only monsters here are of the human variety but the carnage that happens within these pages is just as horrific as any supernatural horror monster tale I’ve ever read. So if you’re asking me, and I’m sure you were, I’m calling it horror. Or horror-thriller-suspense. Whatever. I don’t really give a cat’s butt about the categorization because it is nasty and it is gory and it is great fun. That’s really all you need to know but I’ll tell you a little bit more.

Ken likes to abduct long-haired brunettes. I am not going to tell you what he does to them. You’ll have to read the book for that horrific information. Gertie’s cousin has gone missing (at least I think it was a cousin, my memory isn’t so great and I didn’t write that down – sorry) and Gertie has taken it upon herself to do some vigilante work. She dons a wig and hangs out in sketchy areas at night hoping to attract Ken’s attention. This is probably not the best course of action but Gertie has good intentions. No one else seems to care about these missing ladies so I can’t get mad at her for that. She engages her new co-worker Charlene in this scheme because Charlene is up for anything. I loved Charlene who is smart-mouthed and sarcastic and a wee bit more level headed than her new friend Gertie .

These not-so-best laid plans surprisingly go off track. Haha. That’s all I’m saying about the story.

If you want some suspense, some black humor and some gore in your life you can’t go wrong with this book. It has all of those things and a bunch of other unpleasant (in the best way) surprises too. I was never, not once, tempted to jack up the speed on my player to get things over with quicker because the pacing is just right and the narrator does a great job with the female voices and a decent one with the males. I can easily recommend it to all of you weirdos who like this sort of thing as much as I do!