Review: Mandy by Stephanie Sparks
Guys can be so gross, eh?
Dark Fiction | Goodreads | Bookshop
Mandy by Stephanie Sparks
Released August 2022
Source: Received for Review Consideration
Mandy Fisher is not like other girls…
Awoken one night by a stranger at her door, Mandy reluctantly lets him in. The stranger begs for help for his friend Robbie, recently killed in a drunk driving accident. To make the pushy, distraught stranger go away, Mandy taps into her secret gift to bring Robbie back from the dead.
Her gift is more like a curse when Robbie turns out to be anything but the golden boy Mandy expected. Corrupt and violent, Robbie has an insatiable hunger for death and destruction — and he will stop at nothing to exploit Mandy’s secret for his own gain.
But Robbie soon discovers that when you mess with the weird girl, you get more than you bargained for.
My 2 Cents for Free!
Mandy is alone in the home attached to the mortuary where she works with her dad, it’s the middle of the night, and a stranger comes bang, banging on her door. He’s hollering and insisting she let him in. Carrying on like he’s the damn big bad wolf. Wary but wanting to do some good in the world after, ahem - a dreadful event a few years prior, she answers the desperate knock to find a guy with a very dead friend in tow who begs her to fix the problem he caused.
What gives this man the right? Le sigh. I know it’s fiction but UGH. Men. Sometimes you ask too much of a woman who was just minding her business!
Anyhow, she lets him and the angelic-faced corpse of his friend inside and uses her secret power to fix him up. I don’t want to spoil the rather gruesome surprise the sweet dark lord bestowed upon her young head so I can't tell you what it is! Alas, some men are greedy and NEVER satisfied and this guy (the not-dead one) decides he wants to use her very special power for his own gain. Because he’s a rich, entitled dick.
From there, things escalate because this dude will not take no for answer and Mandy is rather meek and passive after experiencing something quite terrible a few years prior.
I’ll be honest here, Mandy’s passivity and naivety, even though it made sense, began to frustrate me about midway through but I'm not known for my patience. Fortunately, the book moves along quickly and is told in two timelines, so I never lost interest despite my little moments of “ugh, stop listening to that dumb prick!”
The book, despite its dark and heavy themes, has a breezy-not-too-serious feel and the ending was great and a long time coming! Yay, for that ending! Yay for exclamation points too! I recommend Mandy to people who like the weird but not too terribly graphic stuff.
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Sounds fun! I was reading the premise and like- dang- that's quite the power! I hope the jerk gets his at the end lolol
ReplyDeleteRight? This was a wild one!
DeleteOh that sounds all kinds of weird.
ReplyDeleteIt was definitely weird.
DeleteI'm intrigued how she's able to bring people back from the dead, though passivity in main characters, especially women, annoys me, too.
ReplyDeleteIt's VERY dark.
Delete