Finished Reading: Hell House

By Richard Matheson
Fiction/Horror

Hell House by Richard Matheson“Can any soul survive?
Regarded as the Mount Everest of haunted houses, Belasco House has witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity. Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity. Now a new investigation has been mounted – four strangers, each with his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion…” — Goodreads.com


6/5/2015: I picked up this book as I participate (semi-regularly) in the Evil Book Club of Evil.  Feel free to join in on this one!  We’re pretty loosey-goosey about how we do things in this book club.

Finished Reading: Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn
Psychological Thriller; Fiction

Sharp Object Cover

Sharp Object Cover

WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.

NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.

HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.

With its taut, crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable.” — Goodreads

4/24/2015: I actually started reading this on the 14th.  I bought it awhile ago and don’t remember why exactly… other than the whole, y’know, murder mystery intrigue.  I’ve heard good things about Gillian Flynn recently, probably due to the success of the new movie based on one of her other books.  I am currently about 30% through the book and I’m hooked. The author’s writing is paced well and incredibly intriguing, and her character development is already unfolding in such a way that I yearn to read more, learn more about Wind Gap and the mysteries it holds…

Finished reading: 5/16/15.  I found myself setting this book aside here and there once I got about 2/3s through.  I had an idea of the ending.  I was wrong… and feels it left me with…

Book Review #1: FEED by Mira Grant

Goodreads Rating: 3.87 Stars
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Recommendations:  Get this book.  Immediately. 

What I Liked:  The main characters, the setting, the pace, the formatting of story vs blog posts in the book.

What I Didn’t Like: Some of the “incorrect” science, a few things were overly repetitious, the big bag villain was a little too easy to pick up before the big surprise was revealed.


First, I’d like to start out by saying that by TBR list on Goodreads is getting a little out of control. I keep adding books and then forgetting that I have them there.  I had planned on grabbing a copy of the Count of Monte Cristo to read between semesters and needed something to fill the time before I picked it up.  So, perusing through my TBR list, I saw FEED.  It’s been on my list quite a while.  To the point that I’d forgotten when or why I added it and what it was about.

That being said, I thought this book was going to be about some psychopath feeding people to death while it would be live streamed on the internet.  There’s a movie about that right?  As impulsive as I am, I didn’t bother actually reading the synopsis of the book.  I just sent in the request to my local library.

A week later, picked up the book and finally read the back cover.  I was wrong.  This book isn’t about some dude trying to kill people.  It’s a post-apocalyptic zombie book!  I love zombie books!

But this isn’t quite your typical zombie book.  While the zombies hold a large presence in the story, it’s more of the backdrop.  Here is this world where humans have created a cure for the common cold.  They’ve also created a cure for cancer.  But those two cures didn’t interact well with each other.  ZOMBIES! The story follows Georgia and Shaun Mason, and Buffy, three professional bloggers that have teamed up to bring up the best news you can get. Each blogger has a specific role in their team: Georgia is the “Newsie”, she wants the cold, hard facts, and reports on just that; Shaun is the “Irwin” and goes out in the field to video tape himself poking zombies “for science!”;  Buffy is their technical support and the Fictional blogger, she deals with all of their equipment such as servers, cameras, recorders, etc… all while writing poetry about zombies. The three of them have the bases covered. Early on, they’re invited to cover a presidential election, because life is supposed to be as normal as possible, even when zombies are walking around.  And that’s where things start to go wrong.

About this point, there may be SPOILERS!!!  You may want to stop reading if you haven’t finished the book yet.  Or keep reading if you don’t mind spoilers…

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