The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians

by Stephen Graham Jones
Published: Gallery/Saga Press, 2020
Genre: Horror
Amazon, Goodreads

The sound was the crust of snow, crunching.

She was staring at him again. Not dead. Her breath was raspy and uneven, but it was definitely there, somehow, when no way should it have been. Not after having her back broken, half her head blown to mist.

About the book

The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Review

The Only Good Indians is a good ole horror with a twist of Native American culture. 

Four American Indian friends are trespassing on Elder land when they shoot a herd of what they believe to be elk… ten years later, they pay the price for their actions when a terrible entity seeks revenge. 

Gory and creepy, the storyline and atmosphere of the novel is dead on. The structure of the story strays from the mainstream which is what makes the book work so well. 

There is a downfall to The Only Good Indians that leads me to give the book a lower rating. The writing has certain phrasing and sentence structure that makes it awkward to read. This is the first book I’ve read by the author, so I’m unsure if that his writing style or maybe just how this particular book is written. “Like” is also used often in strange places. This could be a cultural difference. 

Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the writing style but other than that, The Only Good Indians is a solid horror/thriller. I would recommend it for those who enjoy horror… just because it wasn’t my cup of tea doesn’t mean it isn’t yours. 

Hollow by Rhonda Parrish

Hollow

by Rhonda Parrish
Published: Tyche Books, 2020
Genre: Horror, Young Adult
Amazon, Goodreads

That moment of absolute clarity, of peace, becomes a weapon in this world which seems to thrive on people's pain and suffering. Not a physical weapon, like a sword or a gun, but a weapon just the same. I feel it. I am it.

About the book

A car accident shattered sixteen-year-old Morgan's family. Now her brother’s dead, her mom's paralyzed in more ways than one, her dad lives at work and her seven-year-old sister Amy tries too freaking hard to salvage everything. What’s more, high school is its own special kind of hell, where her ex-boyfriend delights in spreading rumors that shred her reputation and make her feel like a loser. When she finds an old camera in a creepy abandoned hospital, it seems like her luck is finally changing. And it is changing--from bad to worse. Because of course it is. Each time Morgan photographs one of her classmates they become corrupted versions of themselves. It's like the camera steals their goodness, their essence, and leaves them hollow. Then her sister uses the camera to take a selfie. No matter what the cost, Morgan will find a way to reverse the effects of the cursed camera and save Amy, before her already-fractured family completely self-destructs.

Review

Morgan is an average teenager whose live was changed forever when a car accident killed her little brother and left her mother paralyzed. Several months later, she’s battling with guilt and shame when she finds an old Polaroid camera in an abandoned hospital. Morgan soon discovers that with each photo she takes, those pictured become angry… VERY angry and aggressive, like they’re becoming corrupted versions of themselves. In order to save her friends, Morgan must face her own guilty conscious.

Hollow isn’t a bad book, but it is just OK. I mean, it’s an overall fast, enjoyable read. My main complaint is that the story is slow and the plot is thin. I’m also confused how a photography obsessed teenager doesn’t know the name of the Polaroid camera, but that’s just me being nick-picky. 

The theme of the novel is what liked the most. Morgan must first face her fears and the guilts over the car accident and her failed relationship with Keith before she’s able to save those around her. I feel like this epitomizes the importance of forgiving yourself which is one of the first things I learned in therapy. You can’t control everything that happens to you but you CAN learn to control how you react to it. For this reason, I’m giving Hollow a higher rating than what I was planning originally. 

RATING (out of five puppies)

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky
Published: Grand Central Publishing, 2019
Pages: 720
Genre: Horror
Amazon, Goodreads

We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us.

About the book

Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out.

At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. for six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.

Review

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so frustrated with a book. This is a GOOD book that left me breathless in certain parts but ultimately failed by being too long.

Don’t get me wrong. I like a long novel that as long as it has an interesting plot and great character dynamics and writing. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, Imaginary Friends doesn’t quite make the cut.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of my favorite books of all time, so I nearly peed myself when I saw that Stephen Chbosky published another novel. 

So let’s start with the basics: the plot involves a young boy whose mother is running from a bad boyfriend. They settle in a small town in Pennsylvania. All seems well until Christopher goes missing for six days in the mysterious woods; he comes back home but with an imaginary friend no one else can hear. This plot is very similar to many of Stephen King’s plots, such as The Shining or Firestarter — a young child with unusual powers that ends up facing trouble and gets help from some older, wiser adult.

The thing is, though, this book is not bad! It’s well-written with strong character development and a thrilling storyline. It seems like I’ve already read this book while I was in the middle of reading it.

The book also drags on a bit, especially at the end. There were definitely some scenes that could have been cut that weren’t necessary. At the end, I was frustrated that I put quite a bit of time into reading a 700+ book that was overall very good but didn’t need to be so long.

RATING (out of five puppies)

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Wilder Girls

By Rory Power
Published: Delacorte Press, 2019
Pages: 348
Genre: Young Adult, Horror
Amazon, Goodreads

"We don't get to choose what hurts us” 

About the book

It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.

Review

Wilder Girls is the YA horror novel I didn't realize I needed in my life until now.

Power's writing is creepy and fantastic. She paints such vivid, gross scenes wrapped in an eerie atmosphere, such as:

He's rotting from the inside out. Tissue mottled with mold, the smell so sour and stinging that my eye is watering. Something scuttles up my jacket sleeve, first one then another, and another, and in the red light of a flare I make out the gleam of a hundred wingback beetles crawling out of the wound.

And:

Some days it’s fine. Others it nearly breaks me. The emptiness of the horizon, and the hunger in my body, and how will we ever survive this if we can’t survive each other?

From the very first paragraph, readers can tell the story is disturbing and sinister. Call me old fashioned, but this is how horror should be: a take all, no survivors, freaky as fuck war zone.

I feel like Wilder Girls makes a statement about sticking together and the importance of friendship. I haven't read many of the other reviews about Wilder Girls, but we as women need to stand together and watch each others' backs. In the novel, the school girls are in survival mode: they stay in their groups and watch out for one another. Without giving too much away, the main characters Hetty, Reese, and Byatt are separated from one another. Through the horrors, illness, and traumas taking place around them, the girls reflect on their relationships with each other. Throughout the story's development, the girls on the island are abandoned, left to fend for themselves, but the one thing the main characters still have is their friendship. And that's a pretty awesome thing.

Wilder Girls is easily one of my favorite books of the year and one I'd definitely recommend!

RATING (out of five puppies)

Into the Drowning Deep

Into the Drowning Deep

By Mira Grant
Published: Orbit, 2017
Pages: 448
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror
Amazon, Goodreads

 The mermaid does not care whether or not we believe in its existence. Somewhere far from here, the mermaid continues to do what it has always done: it continues to thrive. And it waits for us to realize that belief is, in the end, irrelevant.

About the book

Seven years ago the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a mockumentary bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a tragedy. 

Now a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost. 

Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves.

Review

Into the Drowning Deep is a fascinating, mind-blowing sci-fi-horror read about killer mermaids. And this book is definitely killer all right!

What drew me right away was the plot: crew members to a ship that had set up to film a mockumentary of mermaids mysteriously disappears and several years later, a new crew is assembled to set out and find the proof the previous crew could not. 

The mermaids present in our pop culture are like the Little Mermaid: beautiful, curious about humans, etc. Into the Drowning Deep presents a different perspective - mermaids as vicious hunters. The author's originality mixed with a tense, terrifying atmosphere and great writing makes this book a fantastic read.

This book surprised me in several ways: it's also a horror novel and it's very diverse. One of the main female characters starts a romance with another female, and it's considered normal, not at all unusual. Neither one of them are required to explain it or question what they are doing; it's just them and their love for each other. I knew Into the Drowning Deep was a sci-fi (that's where it was in the library) but there is a sinister atmosphere to the story similar to Stephen King's writing.

This is the first of Mira Grant's novels that I've read, and I'm definitely going to check out her other books. Into the Drowning Deep is a book I'd recommend to those who like fantasy, sci-fi and/or horror.

RATING (out of five puppies):

The Slender Man

The Slender Man

By Dexter Morgenstern
Published: 2017
Pages: 243
Genre: Horror, Young Adult
Amazon, Goodreads

Just out of the corner of my eye stands a dark figure, but I'm not sure what it is. It's like a shadow, but its movements are violent and jagged, like electricity. 

Alyssa's life in a small town in North Carolina takes a jolting turn when a school bus accident leaves several children dead, all almost except her little brother. Things soon take a turn for the worst when Alyssa begins seeing strange, dark shapes and the crash victims' older siblings start exhibiting signs of an even stranger illness. Will Alyssa have the strength and courage to defeat this evil force to save those she loves or will she become the latest victim?

OK, so I love the concept of this novel, and the writing is solid. I've been interested in Slender Man for a while. I thought I'd come across this book in Barnes and Nobel, but the one I saw was actually a similar book with the same name. However, I decided to give this a try and I'm glad I did.

The Slender Man has a good plot and characters. This book is better than the usual self-published variety. Yet, there are some issues with the novel. What The Slender Man needs most is a good editor to clean up grammatical errors and assist in areas of the book that I felt were vague. There were parts, specifically when Alyssa is battling the Slender Man in the forest, where a clear picture wasn't painted for the reader; I felt like the scenes could have been better described.

I still enjoyed reading The Slender Man, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject or young adult horror.

RATING (out of five puppies):

The Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door

By Jack Ketchum
Published: 47North, 2005
Pages: 386
Genre: Horror
Amazon, Goodreads

After that day I was like an addict, and my drug was knowing. Knowing what was possible. Knowing how far it could go. Where they'd dare to take it all.

The Girl Next Door is like a gory, terrible car accident that you can't take your eyes off of.

OK, so I downloaded this book without really reading the synopsis and realized while reading that I had watched the crazy, twisted movie based off the novel. As such, the cruelty and violence and the big climax didn't take me unawares.

The major thing you need to know before reading The Girl Next Door is that I definitely would not recommend it to those who don't read horror on a regular basis. It's very gruesome and unhealthy and graphic.

The novel had me hooked from the beginning. The way Ruth is characterized, it's easy to see she's deeply unhinged and severely mentally ill. The way she views women and inappropriately socializes with the pre-teens makes me think she was abused by a major mother figure during childhood. I think Ketchum did a good job in writing the characters and crafting a horrific atmosphere that grabs readers by the chest and doesn't let go until the end.

However, I caught several grammatical and spelling errors. I'm not fussy about one or two - I work in the media industry and I know it's impossible to catch every single mistake. There were several larger errors, though, that I believed could have been corrected with more thorough editing.

It's hard to rate The Girl Next Door because I don't want to say I enjoyed it. Read at your own risk.

RATING (out of five puppies):

Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary

By Stephen King
Pages: 373
Published: Doubleday, 1983
Genre: Horror
Check it out on Amazon

"It has fed on your grief... no, more than that. It's doubled it, cubed it, raised it to the nth power. And it isn't just grief it feeds on. Sanity. It's eaten your sanity. The flaw is only the inability to accept, not uncommon."

Dr. Louis Creed moves his family half way across the country when he accepts a job as the director of an infirmary for a large university in Maine. He and his family move into a house located in the quiet county. Well, quiet that is except for the parade of loud, large trucks rushing past 24/7. Louis quickly befriends an elderly neighbor, Jud, and learns there is a pet cemetery in the woods behind his home - and something ancient and deadly, too. When his daughter's beloved cat dies, Jud revels a secret about the Pet Sematary - one that none of them will ever forget.

It was difficult for me to really get into this book at first - I felt the beginning moved pretty slow. It wasn't until I was about two-thirds of the way in that I finally got hooked. King is always good at setting an ominous tone in his novels; for Pet Sematary, this occurs when Jud warns Louis and his wife to watch out for the dangerous road and later on when he warns the family to never stray from the path in the woods. However, the slow pace made it difficult for me to continue reading it.

I've read several of King's books and while this wasn't my favorite, I still enjoyed it. The ending is what I think saved my opinion of Pet Sematary. I won't post spoilers, but the ending was completely unexpected and perfect.

RATING (out of five puppies)