Scoring Can be Fun! & The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones…

As soon as I finished this book, I knew I wanted to give it 5 stars- the first 5 star rating I have actually given in quite a while. I know that some reviewers hand out those 5 stars like they are Halloween candy, but they’re precious to me. That feeling of knowing about a perfect rating made me think about my personal scoring method, and how random it is, and how I often feel that I’ve rated some books completely wrong when I go back and compare them to other books. So I did a very English teacher-y thing (even though it has been a LOT of years since I’ve been a teacher). I made a rubric!

I’ve given each category a number of points, and the total points available are 600, so each star rating has a hundred point range. That way I could also let you know if it is 4.5 stars if the book got 450 points. I gave heavier weight to the categories I think are most important: Plot/Story and Characters (150 each), then Emotional Reaction and Voice (100 each) and finally Connections and Other (50 each). This is just how I read & react to books, so I made it very personal to me, and that other category is in there so that I could have some extra points for books I just loved or hated for some reason I just couldn’t put my finger on.

More specifically:

Characters: 150 pts- Did you like the characters? Were they fully realized & fleshed out? Were their reactions realistic? Were they relatable. Did you have any emotional connection to them?

Plot/Story: 150 pts- Was the basic storyline good? Did it catch your interest & make you want to finish the book? How did it flow? Did it continue well throughout, or was one part better than another?

Emotional Reaction: 100 pts- Did the book make you feel what it meant to make you feel? Angry, sad, happy, scared, whatever? Were you emotionally connected at all?

Voice: 100 pts- Did you like the way the story was told? Did that type of POV make sense for that story? Was the narrator reliable and if not, did that work?

Connections: 50 pts- Consider the genre & the specific story- is it trying to make connections with past stories or authors in style or content? How well is that done? (even if the PR is pushing that connection, it affects the reader)

Other: 50 pts- Other things like cover art & gut reaction that might affect you. Personal connections.

Here’s how I rated The Twisted Ones:

I gave it 125 points for Plot. This is essentially the story of a young woman who goes to help clear out her dead (hoarder) grandmother’s house, and she discovers some dark secrets. When Mouse takes her dog on a walk in the woods behind the house, she finds herself on a hill that is geographically impossible covered in strangely carved stones. It all feels wrong. It’s not really a super-original plot, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a retelling, and a very good one, at that. It’s well- paced & I was hooked in fairly quickly. It is a retelling of Arthur Machen’s The White People, which I hadn’t read when I first read this, but I have since. It doesn’t matter if you have read it, but it is a fascinating connection. I think it also helps if you’re a dog person!

Next it got 100 points for Characters. Honestly, the character I connected with the most was the dog, Bongo! I spent most of the story reading as fast as possible just to see if he would live. (if you need to know before you read- DM me & I will spoil it for you) What a great dog! And Mouse loves him, so I cared about her too. But I was even more interested in the quirky side characters like the goth barista, and the strange punk/hippie woman across the street.

For Emotional Reaction, it got a solid 100. It was full of creepy stuff & slow moving discomfort as well as outright scares. I was spooked.

It got 75 points for Voice. I enjoyed Mouse’s narration, and she had a snarky sense of humor that would break up the tension sometimes, which was good. Her descriptions of her walks through the woods were very atmospheric, and I was drawn in. It was a little repetitive here & there. Her grandfather’s journal is a direct reworking of the journal in The White People, so it makes more sense if you’ve read that.

I gave it 50 points each for Connections and Other, because of the way it connects back to Machen’s story and because of the way I just can’t resist a little backwoods faerie spook.

And that is how we get to 500 points and 5 stars for this fabulous book!

The Only Good Indians- Stephen Graham Jones

Some horror novels creep up on you- those slow burns- and some are just straight up hardcore slashers where you rush towards the end. But every once in a while, you come across a work that scares you because it hits too close to home, because you feel it deep in your bones. The kind of book that you are still thinking about days, weeks, months later- the kind that has you turning on lights, your heart beating a little too fast. That is what The Only Good Indians was for me, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

This is the story of the past haunting four Indian friends, and not in a metaphorical way. When they were young, these four cocky Blackfeet indians went on a hunt on forbidden elder tribal land, and what happened there has followed them into adulthood. They are coming up on the ten year anniversary of the hunt, and one of them has already died. Will any of the others survive the revenge that is coming to them? And what exactly does it mean to be a “good Indian?”

This story is raw and bloody and heart-wrenching in all the best ways. I love horror that draws from folklore and traditional stories, and this is one of the best that I have read. Graham-Jones draws from his own tribal background, and the horrifying stories of other tribes to create a heart-rending modern folk tale.

I give this book a HUGE 5 Stars, and highly recommend that you mark your calendars for its release on May 19th.! I will be putting up a more thorough & spoilery review at that time.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy!

Bunny- Mona Awad

“Innovative.
Experimental.
Performance based.
Intertextual.
SO intertextual.
Basically: a hybrid.
A hybrid: That most obscure of academic beasts. What you call something when you just don’t know what you’re doing anymore.”

Mona Awad’s Bunny is so this! I am not sure if I should call it horror, or comedy, or dark comedy, or just plain weird literary insanity…

Set at an elite New England grad school, Bunny zeroes in on the Lit department, where the poets are losers, and the very richest and most beautiful of creative writers are a part of a clique known as the Bunnies. The Bunnies call each other Bunny, and are each beautiful and sickeningly sweet as cupcakes- as a matter of fact, they mostly look and smell like cupcakes, too. You might see a bit of Heathers or Plastics in these ladies.

But one of the members of their writing group is emphatically NOT a Bunny- Samantha Heather Mackey, or Smackie, as her friend Ava calls her. Ava “would never eat a lavender cupcake that tasted like perfume or wear a perfume that made her smell like a cupcake. She would never wear lip balm for cosmetic purposes. She would never wear it unless her lips were seriously, seriously chapped.” Samantha is a scholarship student, and she and Ava find the Bunnies group hugs and fake voices detestable.

That is, until the day they invite her to one of their Smut Salons. Where they make her special drinks and recite weirdly erotic passages. And then ask her to bring them a bunny. A real one. All of a sudden, Samantha is seeing rabbits everywhere. Are they talking to her?

The Bunnies invite Samantha to one of their own private “Workshops,” which Samantha thinks will be about writing. They do end up creating, but it is definitely not literature. They are creating their own hybrids, their own darlings. And you know….sometimes you have to kill your darlings.

The deeper Samantha gets into the world of the Bunnies, the more the edges of reality begin to blur- is she drugged? Are these things even happening?

This book is simply genius! Even if you have never taken part in a creative writing class, Awad drowns you in the process- exposing the very depths of creation and the gut-wrenching birthing process that writers go through to bring forth a finished work. I was more than amused to discover that she and I went to the same private grad school in Denver! While we didn’t exactly have a cave to work in, I know how close-knit English departments can be. And how lonely school can be in a new place where you don’t know anyone. This book is about all of that: friendships, loneliness, creation, the agency of womanhood, and most of all: cute lil bunnies!

There aren’t enough stars to give to this, so of course I’m giving it all 5! It was dark & delicious, and oh so funny- I was literally laughing out loud so often my friends were questioning my sanity. But then again, so was I.

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein- Kiersten White

“Words and stories were tools to elicit the desired reactions in others, and I was an expert craftswoman.”

Such is how we meet Elizabeth Lavenza, young friend and “caretaker” of Victor Frankenstein. Kiersten White has written a fascinating retelling of the classic story, from the point of view of Victor’s young wife. In Frankenstein, Elizabeth was little more than set dressing, a beautiful angel, and nothing more. White dedicates her version of the story to “everyone made to feel like a side character in their own story.”

In Shelley’s version, things don’t turn out so well for Elizabeth…

In this version, Elizabeth is indeed a beautiful angel, but she is of her own making. She is an orphan, and she comes to the Frankenstein family as a child, someone to help temper Victor’s unusual tempers. Her “caretaker” was terrible to her, and she had lived her early life poor, hungry, and beaten down, so she saw opportunity in the Frankenstein home. She was quick to make herself into whatever she needed to be to be a part of this wealthy home. She became Victor’s Elizabeth, letting her own self recede into the background. Victor’s needs are many, and he needs help controlling his violent emotions, as he often falls int “fevers.” His morbid curiosity is also something his Elizabeth must help him keep under wraps. Even as a child, he had a habit of wanting to see what lies beneath the surface, of wanting to learn what death means & if it can be conquered.

Oh, this is so deliciously gothic! The women of the gothic have been doing this for all time- it even has a critical name; professional feminism. Women who, knowing the constraints of the time, use their assets (beauty, softness, femininity) to get what they want. (I will soon be doing an entire blog post on this- it’s one of my favorite things about the gothic novel!) Anyways, Elizabeth does this so very perfectly. She becomes exactly what Victor desires. She wears only white for him, she protects him from the outside world, and she calms him when his rages bubble to the surface. But what about what Elizabeth wants?

As the story unfurls, Victor has gone away to school in Ingolstadt and Elizabeth is worried that her place in the Frankenstein home is in jeopardy without him to take care of. The younger children already have a nanny- her best friend Justine. So when Victor’s father goes away for a while, Elizabeth convinces Justine to go with her to look for Victor. They haven’t heard anything from Victor in more than a year. On the search, Elizabeth begins to learn more about Victor’s disturbing studies, and eventually she finds his laboratory. And his creation.

Yeah, not this monster- I’ll never understand why they made him look like this! The one in Penny Dreadful is my fave!

What follows is the story we know- but with some twists! The wedding night doesn’t go exactly as it does in Frankenstein. White takes Elizabeth on a journey towards self-realization, as she learns how to become her own Elizabeth and not Victor’s Elizabeth. I really enjoyed this story- it was perfectly dark and tinged with madness. It’s a character study in obsession, both Victor’s and Elizabeth’s. The first half does drag a bit, but I listened to it, and the fantastic narration got me through it easily. The action in the second half easily makes up for it.

Easily 4 Stars! I look forward to more work from White.

Experimental Film-Gemma Files

“Given everything that’d happened…wouldn’t anybody have stopped short and said to themselves: holy shit, it’s like I’m in some kind of horror movie, here?

“In its purest form, done right, watching an experimental film is the closest you can come to dreaming another person’s dreams. Which is why to watch one is, essentially, to invite another person into your head, hoping you emerge haunted.”

What I loved most about this novel is the visual descriptions. Because this is a book about film, Files has to make the reader see the story. She does an absolutely brilliant job at this; I could feel the brightness, my eyes tearing up, the glare off the screen.

It’s been compared often to House of Leaves and Night Film, and I think those comparisons, in some ways, are apt. They are all “found footage” books, describing uncovered films. The act of describing a movie puts the reader at a certain distance that the author must bridge with language. Like we are at another remove from the subject of the book by our very inability to actually see it. The author must be our eyes.

In order to do that, the author must be a stellar storyteller, and Files is certainly that, “we’re storytelling creatures. Give us a bunch of seemingly random images and we will try to organize them into a linear progression.” That’s what this book is about- trying to find the story behind some random images found in an experimental film.

We follow film critic Lois Cairns as she digs into the history of a woman who is possibly Canada’s first female filmmaker- Iris Dunlopp Whitcomb. The subjects of Mrs. Whitcomb’s very experimental films are always the same, the noon witch of Slavic mythology Lady Midday. The myth of Lady Midday itself is one I’ve never heard before, and it’s always a joy for me to learn a new mythology, especially one that can inspire such horror. See, Lady Midday appears at the very moment of noon, “between the minute and the hour,” to tired field workers, asking them questions or distracting them. If they answer wrong….they lose their head to her scythe! She also causes physical distress; she is essentially the personification of heatstroke.

“She who Gives All, who walks behind every row.”

As Cairns begins to learn more about Mrs. Whitcomb, the readers learn more about both of their lives. I read some reviews that were critical of the portions of the book devoted to Cairns’ personal life and relationship with her family, but I found them extremely important, both as character study and as a way to link her to Mrs. Whitcomb. Their lives parallel each other in more and more obvious ways as the novel progresses. They both had sons on the spectrum (of course, Whitcomb wouldn’t have known such a term that long ago), husbands that seem almost ineffectual, and most of all, they both spent time in the presence of Lady Midday.

And that is where it all goes wrong. The Noontime Witch takes over everything in Lois’s life and she becomes obsessed. Her goal is to make a film about it, of course, and she gets some funding for it. An old colleague is also following Lois’s story, putting obstacles in her way at every turn. Lois becomes increasingly more physically ill until she reaches a breaking point.

How many people will she drag into the light with her?

This book is amazing! The characters are all intricately drawn, even the ones from a century ago, and the story moves at a quick pace even with all the detail. And, most of all, it was scary! Not like gore & killers scary, but real disturbing down in your stomach scary. Like the next time I had a migraine, I immediately thought about Lady Midday kind of scary.

That, my friends, is five stars scary!