beau_reads_books's reviews
203 reviews

“Sure, you think you know what’s waiting for you under the water, but believe you me, you can never be sure what’s going to take your hook.” -“The Fisherman”, John Langan

Oftentimes in reading horror I find myself commenting, “This could have been about one hundred pages shorter and I’d be happy with it.” Not the case with “The Fisherman”, in fact, I wanted one hundred more pages of this mesmerizing tale. The combination of contemporary and folk-lore type prose really solidified this story. I was surprised, at first, with how much I liked the jump in narratives but I can be a bit of a stick in the mud about pacing and attention directing. This story is really, really big and I loved every whisper of it.

I also don’t think this is so easy as to just hide under the umbrella of the “grief metaphor” or “at it’s heart, it’s about loss.” Sure, there’s touches of those concepts; I don’t know a horror tale that doesn’t have them. But Langan carves out something a little deeper with this book. This is a good, old fashioned, new century scary story that’s going to make me rethink my summers on lake shores, rod in hand and bobber bouncing.

5/5 It really hooked me.

I know I’d said I wasn’t sure if I would continue on with this series but my curiosity got the better of me. And, once again, I’m not sure if I will but I am nothing if not a completionist.

I don’t know if it’s because this is the second in the series and Griffiths needed to flesh out the characters more for reader attachment but I found myself thinking the lead, DI Stephens, was a bit insufferable at times. More so than I found him in the first book; I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not. I understand these characters to be complex but all of the men sort of erring on the side of misogyny, with no overarching examination of that behavior, is quite distracting.

The problem is: the stories are fun. The writing is easy. I can shut my brain off and plug in for a while. These sit like cozy mysteries with a harsher edge to them, with the content matter that is. Griffiths shoves a British procedural into a 300~ page and you can gobble it up and move on to the next one without having intense, cloying feelings.

At the end of the day, I’ll probably finish the series as there are like three or four more in the series and I like using these books as little pleasant breaks, and they’re easily attainable at my library.

3/5 because I like the writing even if some of the continuous characters are kind of jerks.

Paul Tremblay wrote a zombie book! Well, a “zombie” book. Late to the game, as usual, I write this review acknowledging that this would have hit a lot different a few months into the Covid quarantine days but alas, I only started picking Tremblay up last year. Regardless…Paul Tremblay wrote a zombie book!

Fast paced from page one, “Survivor Song” is a nail-biting, grief stricken, platonic love story that I could not put down if you paid me to. A couple real pretentious knuckleheads complained about the dialogue and character believability (oh no, women talked!) in the reviews a couple years ago and I’d hazard a guess that they aren’t real fun at parties. What’s the litmus test for how to behave in an apocalypse? I think Tremblay really knocked it out of the park with all of the characters, including the more…cough conservative cough, players.

That being said, this is was a really quick read. The book technically only encompasses a day and we’re supposed to feel Real Big Feelings (TM) about what’s happening to who and how and where. I was able to do that because I’m an Emotional Guy (TM). This book could be a challenge for readers who struggle with macro vs. micro level impact stories: you’re picking up a 300 page book that’s about two people making decisions about survival and it’s going to make you a little sad and also a little happy maybe. If you need a bigger apocalypse story read the Bible or something.

5/5 Paul Tremblay could write the phone book and I’d read it.

For starters, everything about this book was designed for me to like it. And I did, to a certain extent, like it enough, but in reality it was a bit of a let-down. You can stop reading there if you’d like and go about your day but I’ll briefly clarify for my true blue fans.

Snowy mountain tuberculosis sanatorium turned luxury hotel accessible only by funicular or easily blocked path? Excellent, go on.

“Enh” character development leaning towards the reality that every single man in this book deserves to be chucked off the tallest peak in the Alps for crimes of gaslighting and just generally being a jerk (which has zero to do with the plot, they’re just shitty dudes for no reason, even if the reason were to be shitty dudes)? Boooo.

Mysterious disappearances, captivating pacing and plot-driving chapter cliffhangers, fun scare scenes, a pretty solid body count? Cool.

Taking an imaginative concept and kind of dulling the shine a bit with some difficult to believe detective work and a humdrum ending? You lost me.

3/5 but I will probably read the next one in the series lol.

What a rollercoaster I consented to ride! “Last Days” started off strong, kinda sorta puttered about in the middle, and then just…ended. Sure, there was plenty of tension. Thrills and chills? Absolutely! It scared the crap out of me more times than I’d care to admit to the seven people who read my reviews. Did this book place Adam Nevill on several Big Whopper (TM) horror lists? Apparently! If it were a competition of how many times he could explain how fat the mean bad lady was, he definitely won!

Hyperbole aside, I feel it’s petty of me to dwell on the boredom created by the (rather insidious, if you think about it) misogyny depicted in “Last Days,” but I can’t help but tack off a few points because of it. It is such a let-down when the story is captivating in all the right ways, but you kind of end up wishing the worst for the characters because of their shitty personalities. I don’t think we’re supposed to read Kyle as a whiny edgelord but if the duck quacks? My sympathy dwindled as I read and read and read. I suppose a certain irony can be found in my attachment to literally every other character than the protagonist, given the subject matter of the narrative.

Regardless, I’d recommend this book to a fan of spooky cult reads with a warning of its density and lead character quality.

3/5 because of the gristly layer of “um, actually”

I have never been struck so rabidly obsessed with a novel until I picked up “The Thursday Murder Club.” Truly foaming at the mouth for this whodunnit, a frolicking tale expertly winding from character to character in the most pleasant retirement village. If put to film, something like a Wes Anderson sepia touched, gritty yet whimsical comedy would only do it justice. I cannot recommend this book enough, unless you hate murder and also fun.

Using infectious narration, cunning dialogue, and a twisting and turning plot that never becomes nauseating, Osman creates an alternate reality where we as readers are also softly alcoholic British octogenarians cracking a case around a jigsaw puzzle table. “Murder Club” has cemented me into the reality that I have become a die-hard cozy mystery fan in my old age. Pour me a cuppa because I am committed to these characters, for however long we have them, they are violently old.

I laughed, I cried, I added the next two in the series to my reading list.

5/5 I wished I developed non-threatening short term memory loss so I could read it again immediately after I put it down.

“Real life works that way, but not stories, not novels. Not the ones we want to read anyway. Novels are lies. Great, big, wonderful lies.”

After shoveling book after book by this author into my gluttonous eyeballs, I knew eventually I would come across one that I just couldn’t connect with. I’m not mad and I will continue to search out any and all Tremblay I can get my greedy hands on; I’m not a traitorous reader and I will never hang up my “No. 1 Paul Tremblay Fan-Man” hat.

This was a good book. It has everything I need from a good book: witty prose, solid length, big descriptive writing to really get me in the trenches. Tremblay is a character creation and setting building master and “Pallbearers” is proof again. Like “A Head Full Of Ghosts,” we don’t know anything but what we’re told, and that reality is where suspense lives in these pages.

I think the split narration/marginalia created a ping-pong effect that took a lot of the WHAM out of the ending, which I genuinely adored. The back and forth, conversation concept is largely endearing, however I found it added to some confusion build up where the narration was already hyperbolic. The spectrum of self-effacing vs. masturbatory narration was a difficult terrain to navigate and ended up being the facet I couldn’t make friends with.

3/5 I would recommend other Tremblays to start, but I wouldn’t knock this off the list entirely.

“The Sun Down Motel” is the end result of someone taking a handful of darts and throwing them at a wall, and on the wall there are several index cards that say “ghosts, motel, crime, drama, love?” and the darts hit all of those words. Not necessarily a bad thing in theory! I’ll probably be trying to make my mind up over this one for a while. “Sun Down” has all the elements that make me go “ooo” and “ahh” but it didn’t quite trip my trigger like I imagined it would.

The dual/split narration drove a lot of the creative edge and I appreciated the back and forth across decades: it added tension, kept me focused on the plot, and I got to point at the clues like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme. The contemporary dialogue was self-aware and refreshing compared to some less thought provoking thrillers I’ve picked up.

But, it got a little dry and a lot jumbly. On top of being a bit repetitive, so many things kind of just plopped in your lap in the last forty or so pages and it was hard to hold in my brain, and not in the fun “what the heck did I just read?!” kind of way. More of the, “I don’t know what to do at this point so here have another plot line.”

3.5/5 bumped to 4 because it’s a good book I just wanted more time with the ghost part.

“I don’t know how to tell them so they’ll believe me, but it only gets worse from here.”

“Dead Silence” was like if “Event Horizon” and “Ghost Ship” had a baby and then that baby had a baby with “Thirteen Ghosts”. I could absolutely see a movie version of this probably not doing super well with mainstream audiences but landing forever in the hearts of sci-fi horror fans.

The writing was clunky but not in a permanently distracting way. The beginning use of “then and now” narratives took some punch away from the story; it added some heavy-handed, too obvious tension to an already tense story. However, I think in the end it did work out for the story and where the story led.

I really love a book that makes me say, “Oh shit,” a lot. Great pacing kept me flipping pages well into the wee hours, desperate to know how it ended. Really, really vivid imagery kept me hooked til the very end. Gory, gruesome, spine-tingling fun to be had by everyone!

4/5 for the aforementioned clunkiness and some continuation errors that took me away from the heart of the story: scarin’ me silly!

I tend to stray away from books that make me feel squishy feelings. I like gross stuff, and ghosts, and scary things that tickle my feet at night. “Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore” jumped out at me from the mystery aisle and I tossed it in my bag without another thought. I’m glad I did but at what cost.

From the start, the characters are the real plot carriers as the mystery is tossed to the wayside and if I’m being terribly honest, pretty easy to figure out. But, I stayed for the players. Sometimes you hazard to make your characters TOO interesting, and tiptoe into cringe territory, but I didn’t find that here: these are weird people, as book people often are (they’re also from Denver but that’s beside the point.) They’re tangible, WHOLE characters. I bet if you asked the author ten interesting facts about every character he wrote, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell you: you get the feeling he took the time to care about them. This book is human, even in its unbelievable nature, and the humans in it are flawed in a realistic, aggravating way.

This book will not be for everyone that is looking for a simple mystery. It’s a multifaceted, complexly emotional, but sad book. It shows us the squishy, gross stuff of being human. As layered as it was, I think the main aspects of grief, longing, belonging, and resilience overwhelmed the mystery itself, which isn’t a bad thing at all. But, certainly not what I expected.

3.5/5 this mystery thriller could have been a little more mysteriously thrilling but I did enjoy it nonetheless.