teaandtales1's reviews
918 reviews

This book is really weird, but has enough common themes to tie the reader to reality. I found this listed under horror and listened to the audiobook, but I would definitely classify it as a mysterious magical realism story. 

The girls of a downtrodden Cleveland neighborhood have a lot to deal with. It's 1980 and the steel mill is about to go on strike (putting most of their father's on the picket line), their mothers have an intense neighborhood watch system, and the young women are dealing with all the societal pressures of their station. All this makes for a dreary time, until things start to get weird. 

A few of the girls start turning into rusted out, metallic versions of themselves. While the government gets involved to poke and prod, it's really the neighbors that turn their back on them, as it's easier to hide girls with a problem instead of helping them. 

While this story wasn't anything like I expected, I did really enjoy it.

About half of these stories were excellent. The rest were either skippable or just okay. 

⭐⭐⭐1/2
I think sometimes the 3-star rating is misconstrued as a poor rating in today's world, but it isn't, and I was really entertained by this book. This book was fast-paced, and engaging characters, and gave me the same type of thrill of watching an 80s or 90s slasher movie. 

Why only the 3 stars then? There was just too much. The main character had an drug-addicted mother and ran through the story fighting off multiple bullies, an escaped serial killer, AND wendigos. Not just one wendigo, a whole... herd(?) of them. Like, it's just too much. 

I'll probably read the sequel though. 

🇹​​🇮​​🇹​​🇱​​🇪​⦂ A Dark and Endless Sea
​🇦​​🇺​​🇹​​🇭​​🇴​​🇷​⦂ Blaine Daigle
​🇵​​🇦​​🇬​​🇪​​🇸​⦂ 300
​🇬​​🇪​​🇳​​🇷​​🇪​⦂ Horror, Oceanic horror, Descent into madness
​🇹​​🇮​​🇲​​🇪​ ​🇵​​🇪​​🇷​​🇮​​🇴​​🇩​⦂ Contemporary
​🇧​​🇪​​🇨​​🇭​​🇩​​🇪​​🇱​ ​🇹​​🇪​​🇸​​🇹​⦂ No
​🇸​​🇺​​🇲​​🇲​​🇦​​🇷​​🇾​⦂ Whitt Rogers is plagued by mysterious, nightmarish dreams every night. When he wakes up he has no memory of his past, or even the previous days or weeks. One night a strange figure comes to him and suggests he join a fishing boat where his crewmates seem to be suffering from the same problems. As Whitt and the crew struggle to understand that which plagues them, they're also at the whim of a strange captain that has his own agenda.
​🇷​​🇪​​🇻​​🇮​​🇪​​🇼​⦂ ⭐⭐⭐3/4 
     This book is a slow burn horror/mystery with some gruesome injuries, cosmic creatures, and multiple descents to madness. If any or all of those interest you, you will probably really enjoy this story. 

     This is my first time reading Daigle's work (although I've had my eye on some of his other stories before this). I was drawn to the book due to my love of oceanic horror and I felt the eerie, monotonous setting to be really effective in immersing the reader in the story. The characters were well-rounded, despite having little memory or backstory for any of them, and Daigle did a great job of slowly building the tension on the ship as things got weirder and weirder.

     Overall I thought the story was successful and I will be reading more of Daigle's work. I do think the book got a bit repetitive, particularly with the many dream sequences. If it was about 50 pages shorter, I believe the story would have been just as successful and eliminated some parts of the story that just sort of stalled. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Wicked House Publishing for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I never thought I'd DNF a Kingfisher book, but here we are. After reading about half of it, I found I just don't care at all what happens with this story or characters. Considering how much I was looking forward to this, I was especially disappointed. 

𝓐𝓾𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓻: Jennifer Marie Thorne
𝓟𝓵𝓸𝓽: Anna is really not looking forward to a trip with her super dysfunctional family. Sure, the Italian countryside is beautiful, but when everyone in the family always blames Anna for things that go wrong, and they just happen to be renting a haunted Tuscan villa, it's shaping up to be a terrible vacation.
𝓟𝓪𝓰𝓮𝓼: 324
𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓻𝓮: Horror, Haunted house
𝓑𝓮𝓬𝓱𝓭𝓮𝓵 𝓽𝓮𝓼𝓽: yes
𝓣𝓲𝓶𝓮 𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓭: contemporary
𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓫𝓸𝓸𝓴𝓼 𝓘'𝓿𝓮 𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓭 𝓫𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓻: first time reading her, but I already have Lute on my shelf to be read
𝓕𝓸𝓻 𝓯𝓪𝓷𝓼 𝓸𝓯: Haunting of Hill House (both the book and the show), dysfunctional families, ghosts, possession, dark humor
𝓡𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I've been fortunate to have read many great books already this year, but I think this one might jump to being one of the best so far. This book tells the story of a centuries-old villa with a huge ghost problem, but it might be the most relatable horror book I've read in awhile. 

Thorne does a great job creating a compelling, yet flawed protagonist in Anna, while also rounding out the story with Anna's awful family. I saw awful, because that's how they treat each other - especially Anna - and when shit starts going down at the villa, guess where all the finger pointing is going to be directed. 

All that being said, I don't want to lose the horror in this review. This book is SCARY and had me peeking around corners on my way to bed last night.

I read this book in 2 sittings - it was entertaining, fast moving, terrifying, and also darkly funny. I'm ready to buy everything else Thorne has published.

This is a really well-written book that I did not care for. There's dark and bleak and then there's this book. As an avid horror reader it takes a lot to make me want to skim certain parts of a book because it's just *too much,* but I felt the need to do that on multiple occasions. There was just so much in this book that didn't really need to be there, and in the process I felt the story dragging me down further and further into its well of darkness. 

This book was so frustratingly bad. So many characters making the worst decisions over and over again.