natreviews's reviews
413 reviews

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

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adventurous slow-paced

3.0

To be honest, this was really hard to read through. It was slow, and there were so many names mentioned that half of the time I had no clue who anyone was. I'm disappointed that this wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be.
Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 22%.
This books is meant for people who don't know the parallels that are here or how these groups became even more crazy during the pandemic. If you know the basics, you pretty much know this book as far as I was able to read. 
Cyberpunk City Book One: The Machine Killer by D.L. Young

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.
Just has the "main character" trope (get picked out of my daily life by someone higher class and craziness happens) and I don't need that. Like, it's what people complained about Twilight level of main character trope. 
The Haar by David Sodergren

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A really good creature feature folk tale. If you enjoyed The VVitch, and The Lighthouse, you will enjoy this book. 
Red X by David Demchuk

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I really enjoyed this book. It's a nice blend of reality and fantasy offering a good horror experience. It'd be interesting to see if this would ever get a sequel or be expanded upon. 
All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I think if you're intimidated by The Terror and enjoyed the movie The Thing, then you'll like this book. It shares a lot of the same themes as those two stories, but is written for New Adults.

The thing I really didn't like was the jumping back and forth. It rarely announced itself, and made it a bit confusing to read. There would also be parts where it's assumed you know what the characters movements are when it's never stated. For example, someone is grabbing tea and there is a person behind them. Then, that person is suddenly in front of them and the person who was grabbing the tea is now teleported to where they originally were. The 2nd act of the book also gets pretty repetitive and can make for slow reading.
Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious tense medium-paced

3.75

I liked the writing in this book. All of the cases apart from the first one I had never heard of before, so it was an interesting read. I do wish there was more of a variety of methods explored (as the majority of them were poisonings), but I guess that was the majority of murders by women back in the day.
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

So, this was better then Echo. I found this book to be a mix of The Blair Witch Project, Cabin in the Woods, and Pet Semetary. It starts out as light as it can be, and then just gets darker until the end. 

The only major things I noticed was that sometimes what was written didn't really make sense. For example, something happens in the stable in one sentence, but then it turns out takes place in the house on the second floor. Little things that switch like that. You can tell it was written to take place at one location, but then the next sentence has it taking place at a different one, and the witch was never caught in editing. Or things just not really connecting or making sense. 

The most shocking thing is this book could be considered a good for her book at the end in a weird way?
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Another knock out from LaRocca! I went into this completely blind, and I think everyone should. Three macabre tales, each one really good. I know I need to read more of their work, and hopefully soon.
The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 9%.
The wording is a bit much atm. Will try again later.