Model Home (Solomon)

Model Home
Rivers Solomon (2024)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was a Pandemic Book Club selection. I listened to it, and then read it. It was mostly hated and ripped about by my book club. It rivaled Anger is a Gift as a benchmark to mock other books by.

It didn't help that I listened to this book right after listening to Parable of the Sower. I make no comparisons because that's too high a bar, but, damn.

There are spoilers below because there is no way to discuss this book without them.

The title "Model Home" refers to the house that the family bought. Model homes are a showcase and usually have hidden flaws. Buying this home could almost be like a bait and switch, except every buyer should know that there's less than meets the eye.

This term could also apply to the family that occupies the home as well. (More below.)

But the real flaw belongs to the book itself where one might expect a malignant spirit haunting this house, when in fact the real problem is much more mundane but just as malignant. There is nothing supernatural about the horrors of this house. Every problem has a manmade cause.

Basically, this is the most messed up version of Scooby Doo that you could possibly imagine. And they would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Instead of a story about a haunted house, we get the twisted, messed up lives or a bunch of twisted, messed up people. The main character isn't sympathetic, and neither is anyone else. Like Anger is a Gift, all the checkboxes are checked, including the sudden inclusion of diabetes halfway through the book.

This story takes place in the present (and over the past 30 years) but the attitudes seem quite dated to decades before that. Except of course, that it couldn't be decades earlier because (aside from obvious indicators like tech) no one has a problem with a young boy who suddenly becomes nonbinary and uses "them" pronouns *in the late 90s*. It's hard to take the story seriously when people are supposed to have problems with a black family in a white community but they take non-binary and transgenderism in stride. At the very least, you'd expect more misgendering and misuse of pronouns three decades ago.

Basically, this could've been better if it picked and chose which issues it would stress. And possibly if there actually had been a Lady Without a Face haunting the place.

No, I didn't enjoy this book. I would rate this book 1 star, which I normally reserve for poorly, written self-published work, not because this is poorly written but because it's just that bad.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

In Utero (Gooch)

In Utero
Written by Chris Gooch (2024)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This past fall, I started looking for more standalone graphic novels at the library, both to read and to find examples of artwork that I could show in my Graphic Novel class.

Looking at covers and looking for anything different, I saw the cover of In Utero. Looked interesting. For a moment, I thought the book was going to be in 3-D and that I would need special glasses for it, but a quick flip of the pages informed me otherwise.

In Utero is an Australian YA graphic novel. It purportedly blends coming-of-age, sci-fi, and horror.

There's a bizarre setup where a young girl, Hailey, is dropped off at a day care program which is situated inside a deserted, run-down mall. Years earlier, there had been an "incident" in Australia, and the mall has been closed for a long time. Hailey wanders off when she meets an older teen, Jen, who isn't what she seems to be. They explored the mall, down to a flooded parking level where there is a giant egg. Jen is actually the egg, or rather, a projection of what is growing inside the egg.

At the same time, other kids have explored and found some odd kind of life forms that react to the them, much like a toy or a puppy might. When these things are discovered, Hazmat teams arrive to check all the children and staff, and to gather up the specimens. They make two mistakes: first, putting all the creatures together, and second, thinking that the canisters will contain whatever happens when there's a critical mass of these creatures.

A giant monster forms and starts looking for Jen, while authorities are looking for Hailey as well. It's up to Haily to save Jen and everyone else.

The book was mildly horrific, since it's YA. It had an interesting color palette, being mostly shades of blue, except for when it was primarily red.

It wasn't the greatest thing, or even overly enjoyable, but I was happy to read it. It was definitely something else. And I think I took a few photos of pages that I might be able to use next year if they give me the same class again.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Slewfoot (Brom)

Slewfoot
Brom (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was a Pandemic Book Club selection.

The meeting was a couple weeks ago, but this post slipped through the cracks as I caught up with Library Thing books and Graphic Novels for my class.

Abitha is a young English woman who'd been sent by her father to a Puritan colony in Connecticut that's looking for wives. She's married to Edward who is ten years older than her and in some ways more of a fatherly figure. Edward is also a little on the slower side and easily dominated by his older brother Wallace, who inherited all the property from their father.

Edward has worked a farm owned by his brother for nearly 10 years and has only one payment left to make. Wallace informs him that he is given the farm away to pay a debt rahter than give away the family homestead that their father founded. Abitha is furious with the both of them and finds it difficult to mind her place in this Puritan society. (She could end up in the stocks or worse.)

Abitha coaches Edward so that he can make the case that the farm was promised to him first and that he has met his part of the bargain. The reverend, who is the final say in this community, agrees with Edward, as do as two associates -- including the one who is friendly to Wallace.

Life then gets turned upside down. Abitha leaves the gate open, and their one billy goat, Samson, wanders off into a cave and falls down a deep hole. Edward later goes to find the goat and disappears into the same hole (tricked by voices from down below). Unbeknownst to any of them, there are spirits underground, Forest, Sky, and Pond, who are trying to awaken "Father" to protect the woods and the special magic tree from the newcomers who have settled in the area. "Father" is supposed to be the destroyer of all, the slayer.

He doesn't wish to be. He doesn't know who or what he is, but he knows there's more to it.

When he is spotted, he is called the Devil, Satan, and Slewfoot. I have to admit that Slewfoot was a new one on me. When he finally meets Abitha, she names him Samson, after the goat. Side note: there is stunning artwork by Brom in the book and there is different artwork for Samson and Slewfoot. The question remains, are Samson and Slewfoot the same or is he just assuming the identity of Slewfoot for this story?

Seriously, I assumed that he wasn't really Slewfoot, but I was waiting for Slewfoot to actually appear, if for no other reason than the painting. But he doesn't. So is Samson actually Slewfoot? Or are such matters in this story beneath Slewfoot's notice?

In any event, Abitha doesn't want to find herself beholden to Wallace, her only family by law, and invokes her rights as a widow to champion the affairs of her late husband. She only need deliever the corn on time and the farm would be hers. But the rain said otherwise. And she's a frail and poor widow.

Samson helps her and soon there is enough corn to pay off the debt. Wallace is perplexed and decides to steal the corn with the help of some local Indians. They wind up burning it, and one man is dead.

Along the way, Abitha, who is a cunning woman like her mother, makes charms and salves for some of the girls and goodwives of the community. It is because of this (and because of the ghost of Edward and the site of Samson) that Wallace accuses Abitha of witchcraft. It doesn't help that when Abitha is attacked, Edward's bees fly out and sting only Wallace.

So while we get to root for Abitha beating Wallace and saving her farm, there was no way that this wasn't going to end with a Witch Trial. And being that it's Brom who wrote it, we were going to get an accurate trial, which wasn't going to go well for the accused witch. And it doesn't.

When all is said and done, she is tortured and condemned. Samson can take her away to live the rest of her life somewhere else, likely in pain, or he can make her like him where she might live a few hundred years.

And then the revenge tour begins. The downside to all this is that now everything that the others said about her when it wasn't true, is now true. This causes her only friend to curse and condemn her because she herself feels condemned and doomed now. (These are Puritans after all, even if Abitha wasn't one.)

A Book Club note: several members of my book club thought that she didn't go hard enough on Wallace. Everything she did was over too soon. (I want to say half a page but it was probably longer.)

Myself: I thought the revenge tour went on too long. I got it -- she Big Mad and now she has powers. And I could note that there was plenty of exposition to say that Samson was more of a Force of Nature than a Force of Evil, but this vengeance was purely evil. At one point, I wondered if Samson was going to tell Abitha to tone it down a little (at least until she got the hang of her powers or something), but he didn't.

Also by the end, they were identifying themselves as a witch and the Devil.

This didn't take away from my enjoyment (much) because I expected this.

I realized early on that Edward wasn't going to be saved. He wasn't coming back. He wasn't "inside" Samson -- actually, he sorta was. Edward moves on to the great beyond without Abitha, and now it seems that Abitha, though she tried to love Edward, has closed the door on following him. But she has Samson.

There's an epilogue that takes place 300 years later (the 1960s), which for some reason takes place in a wooded area in Virginia. I guess Connecticut is too settled or something. It didn't really add much except to show that she and Samson (who is mentioned, I believe, but not in the scene) are still around even though they left that wood, the farm, and the Puritans behind. Abitha should be near the end of her lifespan but she appeared as vibrant as ever.

I listened to about half this book but couldn't renew it. I started reading from the beginning again (which was probably a good move -- you miss stuff listening while out walking), and I plowed through it.

A good read.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.

Suburban Hell (Kilmer)

Suburban Hell
Maureen Kilmer (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

Updated 4/23/25

This was a Pandemic Book Club alternate selection. The audiobook becam available while I was reading Starter Villain. I haven't included an image because that's my rule if I only listen to it. That said, I've had the paperback from the library on my nighstand for a couple of weeks and the ebook should be available soon. Since nothing about it turned me off, I will likely read it and update this post.

A capsule review: It starts with breaking ground for a she-shed and then turns into a Poltergeist possession novel. Poltergeist is referenced in the text.

I'll keep this brief until I edit it.

In a small planned community in the suburds where everyone knows everyone, one person, Liz, suddenly starts acting weird. Amy notices and tells her concerns to Jess and Melissa. But it isn't until after an incident with some dead bunnies that it gets creepy. And then Liz tries to kill Amy in a ditch where something evil or demonic is trying to attach itself to her.

This leads to learning about demonic possession and exorcism, as well as learning more about the area the development was built upon and who lived -- and died -- there. The good guys eventually win, but there's an epilogue that unravels the entire thing.

I have to say, I hate epilogues like that. They basically say, "Nope, we failed. Evil will continue to win unless we do it all again and again.

That in itself won't stop from reading the book, but I don't think I'd do a sequel that follows the story unless I get a strong recommendation from someone I trust. As it is, this is out of my "comfort zone" for pleasure reading.

Update: Both the paperback and the ebook became available, so I was able to read the ebook. I finished it right before it was due back. (I might've turned off my wifi so the book didn't disappear for an extra 12 hours.) Reading it, I picked up on some details that I might've missed while I was listening, particularly at the beginning when I was learning who was who. Things get lost in audio, if only because I'm passively listening while I'm out walking. Also traffic and other noise sometimes interferes with it.

That said, not much changed in my enjoyment. The book was good, but the ending was not. The epilogue didn't make sense, and it undermined the resolution of the plot.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. The fourth book will be available by the time you see this!

What Kind of Mother (Chapman)

What Kind of Mother
by Clay McLeod Chapman (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This wwas a Pandemic Book Club pick. Otherwise, I'm not much into horror. For this month, the book selected was one of several that were written by Clay McLeod Chapman, who joined us for most of our book discussion. I participated and had a few things to say without trashing it.

Madi Price has returned to Brandywine, Virginia where she grew up. She is the mother of a 17-year-old daughter who is currently living with the girl's father who didn't want anything to do with her for many years. He's doing well, but Madi is living in a room in an old motel that was converted into a strip mall (and not a particularly good one). Madi goes to the weekly market to read fortunes like her mother used to. She doesn't have any gift. But as soon as she meets old boyfriend Henry McCabe, she has a vision associated with his missing son.

Henry's wife killed herself and his son disappeared. He's sure that he's still out there somewhere. He hangs up posters with computer technology aging his son's image.

Madi finally gives Henry a reading and leads him out into the waters around Brandywine, whether they come across a duck blind -- and Skyler, who has been missing for five years.

But, of course, it's not really Skyler. Henry doesn't want the authorities involved and Madi is freaked out. She wants to get away and take this boy to a hospital to be checked out. But it's not even a real person.

And that gives away enough. I had plenty of problems with this, such as the fact that Henry knew from the start that his son wasn't still out there despite being so convincing and hanging up flyers for five years and putting up with things people say. Henry finally does a 180 in his opinion, which almost seems organic but it's overshadowed by Madi going off the deep end in suddenly choosing Skyler, who'd she'd been suspect of, at the expense of her actual daughter. Her turn is overexpected. And then it gets crazier by the ending.

So, no, as well-written as it may have been, I didn't enjoy the book at all. Others into creature-based horror with mommy issues might feel otherwise.

This was an ebook and I didn't listen to too much of the audiobook.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

Clown in a Cornfield (Cesare)

Clown in a Cornfield
Adam Cesare (2009)

Image withheld under the book is read.

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club pick, and not one that I would've chosen. The cover itself was a turnoff despite not judging books by one. I'm not into horror, and I had a feeling that this young adult horor would "Friday the 13th" everyone. Yeah, pretty much.

Quinn and her dad Glenn move halfway across the country from Philadelphia to an old house in a small town. Glenn is a doctor who has seen too much death, including that of his wife, who'd become addicted to painkillers. They move into the house of the town's former doctor, who left rather abruptly. From Quinn's bedroom (the attic), which runs the length of the house, she can see a factory in the distance with an eery looking clown. She'll learn that it's Frendo, the town mascot. The original factory owner doodled a clown with a hat and put it on the label of whatever it was that he sold. Yeah, I forgot already because it wasn't actually important to the story.

The prologue of the story, which was a year earlier, was a bunch of kids live streaming stunts and practical jokes. They're at the town reservoir. Unfortunately, the younger sister of another main character (Cole) who is too young for these parties decides to climb on the "stacks" and dive in. She hits her head on the way down and dies. Cole jumps in to rescue her, but it's too late.

When we next meet this crew, Janet is still making videos but Cole quit because of an incident that happened off screen a week before in which he accidentally set fire to his Dad's factory. His father had closed the factory the year before and now the town was suffering a bit. Quinn learns all this when she's suspended on her first day of class along with the gang that can't shoot videos straight. Quinn winds up going with Cole to a big school party.

At the Founders Day Parade, a prank that Tucker (Cole's "bodyguard") participates in causes some damages to the floats and a few minor injuries, plus an M-80 goes off scaring people. The sherrif grabs Cole and wants to know what he did and lets him know that the town is down with their hijinks.

There's an emergency town meeting called, after which the murders start, all at the hands of someone dressed in a Frendo costume. They start with knives slitting throats and stabbing guts, but then switch to crossbows. Every kid at the barn seems to be a target, Janet in particular. Quinn and Cole seemed to be spared but not by any plot armor, but by the plot itself.

I'll go ahead and spoil this because it was stupid. Basically, half of the town is down with "culling" the latest crop of high school students, but in this case, they plan to pin it all on the new girl and Cole, for whom a suicide note was written, along with Rust who is supposed to make the third part of a love triangle. Janet's stepfather has absolutely no qualms about the girl dying at all. And then Cole's father shows up. He blames Cole for everything including the death of his daughter, which makes his okay with murdering his own son. Wut?

Rust turns out not to be dead, shows up, saves Cole, who's dangling by his neck at this point. Quinn manages to shoot the sherrif who'd been planning this for a long time, even longer than the previous week's fire, saying how you can persuade people over time that killing their children is the correct thing to do.

I'm not exactly sure how many students go to that high school or how many of them were at that party or how many might've escaped. However, for the plan to have actually played out, those survivors would all have to be hunted down so that the actual story couldn't get out.

I kept waiting for some screwball revelation, like the dead daughter actually being the sherrif's love child or something, giving him a stake in all this. Or Quinn with a rifle confronting her father who was there and dressed in a clown outfit (he dressed like that to escape the prison he was in, where he found the rat-infested body of the former doctor). Instead, the only curve was after Rust saves Cole, the two embrace and start making out. This was not telegraphed anywhere in the story, so it was almost comedic when it happened. They used to be friends (one rich, one poor) until one started playing football and the other wasn't athletic enough. That's their entire story. There was more to suggest that Tucker was "gay" for Cole, who wasn't interested, except that Tucker had mentioned how he enjoyed his hooking up with Janet. So not so much a surprising twist as a head-scratcher.

Finally, the father, who had been double-crossed by the sherrif, who tries to kill him at the end, doesn't have any revelations or changes of heart. He still wants Cole and the rest of the kids dead. And rather than crawling off and dying in a field somewhere, we learn that he was escaped and will return at some point. (There's a sequel.) Meanwhile, Cole is rich with access to all his father's money, even though no body has been found and no one can be certain that he's actually dead.

So much to complain about with this book. But I'm done complaining. On to some other Halloween books -- there are a few cozy mysteries set around Halloween.

What Moves the Dead (Kingfisher)

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club selection. I read it a month before the meeting, so I may update this with group thoughts.

TV Tropes, of all places, tells me that T. Kingfisher is a pen name of Ursula Vernon.

This was the thinnest of the nominees for the monthly selection and I don't remember if it was my first choice. It might not have been because I'm sure Good Reads would've told me that it was an update on "The Fall of the House of Usher". I wasn't aware of this when I started reading it, but as soon as we get to the decrepit mansion owned by the Ushers, I had an inkling.

I'm sure that I read the original story, that is to say, it was read aloud in class, in 11th grade English class, but I couldn't remember any particular details, except for allusions to the story in various sci-fi books and stories, and possibly snippets of a Vincent Price film. (Just checked. Price did a film in 1960, so it would've been on local TV stations many times in my childhood, and my oldest brothers would've likely watched it every time.)

The book starts a little awkwardly because the narrator isn't identifited much beyond a soldier and a friend of Maddie. There is a little confusion with pronouns, which are used before they are explained, so when I saw a phrase like "under kan heel", I didn't realize that "kan" was a pronoun in that case. I thought "kan heel" actually meant something as an expression. "Under one's heel" went straight out of my mind.

In the kingdom of Gallacia, where the narrator in from, va and van refer to he/she and his/her, respectively, for children. This continued to confused me because I see va and van and I think of Spanish 1, where those are verb conjugations. Then there's ka and kan which is reserved for the military. And during the war, they started allowing women to join, but didn't add new pronouns. After one leaves the service, one has the option of keeping "ka" or reverting back to whatever.

This preface is to criticize the fact that unless there were subtle references that flew by me, it was a good chunk of the book before you discover the former soldier narrating the book is, in fact, female. I think it was a reference no longer to binding "kan" breasts, or something similar. Alex is actually Alexandria. This also explains why she's such good childhoos friends with Madeline, but not her brother Roderick, who was in Alex's unit in the war.

The other thing that throw me was the year. References to the war had me thinking World War I, originally, but it was older than that. The appendix places it (from the story's context) to be in the late 1800s.

That confusion dealt with, it was an interesting update on the story (as much as I remember the original). A fungus expert is introduced, fairly knowlegdable but considered an amateur because women can't be mycologists in England.

All I can think of now is all of the tropes, because I hit the page. There isn't much to say that isn't a spoiler for something or other. Madeline is so sick so wouldn't survive traveling from the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania off to, say, Paris. But the house will be the death of her. Seriously. There are strange goings on in and around the house, like rabbits that don't act like rabbits shot -- even after you shoot them in the head.

Cool new word: tarn, which is the biolumimescent lake outside the house which was infected with a fungus.

This was a very quick read. Luckily, I put the ebook on hold as soon as we knew what the choices would be, so it was available early. I enjoyed it. I may go back and reread the beginning before the meeting, if I still have a copy of it.

As it turns out, all three choices became available so I checked them out. Now I have to read them quickly because I don't know which I'll be able to renew. Not really a problem. I'm already enjoying the next book, which will show up on the blog sooner or later.

"The Arcanist" story collections (multiple)

The usual dislainer: Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.

The Arcanist is a magazine that prints flash-fiction (roughly 1,000 words, I believe). They publish one story a week, so you can imagine the competition for that one slot. The magazine also runs flash fiction contests, which the winner gets paid and gets published, along with the runners-up. Disclosure: I have submitted a few times, but I have not been published by them. My rejections have been generic and usually happen with 1-2 months. I have not submitted to any of their contests because they have an entry fee, a small one, but a fee nonetheless. I'd rather take my chances on the slush pile.

Recently, the magazine sent an email about the latest collection of stories it had for sale. It also had stories from previous years available for free.

Another disclosure: probably 5-10 or more years ago, I thought about the idea of self-publishing, since it was just catching on. The problem was that I had nothing in the way of novels to publish and no time to write and rewrite one. (I was "too good" for an editor, so I could save money. Ha!) I thought about the idea of putting out collections of flash fiction, until I thought, "No one is going to pay for a book with 7,000 words. That's a short story!" Turns out I was wrong, and it isn't just the Arcanist doing it.

End of digression.

Below are the books I've read, so far. I may amend this post if I read more this calendar year. Otherwise, I'll make a new post in 2023.

Welcome to Camp Arcanist (2021)

Stories about camping.

• "The Monster of Lake Gregg" by Kara Pogos was cute, with an unexpected ending. Part monster, part ghost story. First place winner.
• "Take Me Back to The Giants" by Connor Smith was the second place winner. I might've enjoyed it more if it hadn't reminded me of a better (longer, naturally) story from Analog in the late 80s/early 90s. The camping part is incidental, and it could've been replaced with a different theme alongside the other half (the twist) of the story.
• "Special Order" by Aeryn Rudel was third.

Yeah ... this didn't work out. At some point, I'll go back and list the stories. But let's face it, I probably won't. Here's a list of the rest of the books I read, each about seven stories long, some better than others. I hope I got the years right. I got this from the email which didn't list the years, but I think they went in order.

Hunger Flash (2020)

Tales From the Weird Weird West (2019)

Monster Flash (2018)

Magic, Monsters, and Mayhem (2017)

The Arcanist Presents: Ghost Stories (2016)

My Best Friend's Exorcism (Hendrix)

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix (2016)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection. it was also a it of an odyssey in finding a copy of the book. The novel has been made into a movie, so copies are hard to come by. I was told by two libraries that the estimated wait time would to 10-12 weeks for a copy .

As a result, I started to use the Internet Archive, which had a copy, but I was only able to borrow it for one hour at a time, until a 14-day copy became available. Adding to the insanity, the Internet Archive is, naturally on the Internet. I couldn't download anything to read on the subway. As a result, before getting on the train, I needed to buffer the next dozen pages or so to read until I got somewhere I could buffer more. And I couldn't launch any other apps that might've cleared memory.

And it was a quick read, so I flew through chapters faster than I expected to.

So the story ... It takes place in the 90s and a lot of 80s reference are sprinkled throughout the text, some of them carefully placed with a sledgehammer. I lived through the 80s, and it wasn't all that 80s-ish that much all the time. Basically, it's product placement with 80s refs instead of actual ads. The chapter titles are 80s songs, which usually fit the chapters thematically, so it's occasionally a stretch. The funny thing about this is that the book reads like one of those 80s "TV Movies of the Week" that the networks would use to fill out their schedules. The fact that it's a current movie is a little more boggling.

When Abby was 10, she had a birthday party, but only Gretchen came because Margaret announces her party on the same day and its at a horse-riding ranch. None of their classmates make it back, but Gretchen didn't go because Abby asked first. References to E.T. abound.

Fast-forward a bunch of years and they are in high school. Abby's father is out of work, so they live in the poor part of town in a scary-looking house, but Abby has a scholarship to her private school. She's still friends with Gretchen, along with Margaret and another girl Glee. They're popular.

While at Margaret's lake house, the girls try LSD. Gretchen goes skinny dipping in the dark and disappears. The others look for her in the woods, and Abby finds a creepy cabin and runs off. They find Gretchen the next day.

Over time, it's obvious that the experience changed her, but Abby starts to believe that Gretchen is possessed by a demon thanks to a cult in the building. And, in fact, she was. At first, she creepy, but suddenly she seems fine and normal, and Abby is the one on the outs. Demon Gretchen is set on destroying the girls' futures and almost succeeds.

The fancy prep school has many assemblies, and one of them is a family of exorcists. One of the sons recognizes the demon within Gretchen. At some point after, Abby contacts him about saving Gretchen. This should be the strongest part of the book, given the title, but it becomes the goofiest. Christian doesn't bring his father because he doesn't believe his father is strong enough to do this any more. But Christian has performed an exorcism and he has lots of notes (which turn out to be useful to Abby). His attempts to force the demon out would result in serious harm to and the possible death of the host, and he has to be forced to back it down a little. Before it's over, he abandons the girls, leaving Abby to save Gretchen before the police arrive.

This is where it get really over-the-top Movie of the Week. When viewed in that light, it makes up for the less than stellar exorcism scene. However, it doesn't end there, as the movie might have. It tells us what happens for the rest of their lives and how the two friends drift apart. (The other two girls will never be the same again.) None of that is necessary except to comment how difficult it is to stay from forever, particularly if someone moves away and put physical as well as emotional distance between them.

So this wasn't scary, and it wasn't funny. It was pretty much straight-forward about the girls and fitting in, especially with Abby suddenly being poor.

The book wasn't terrible, which doesn't sound like much, but I had a sense of dread going into it because I didn't know what kind of graphic demonic possession would be in the forefront. That part wasn't so bad. Parts of it were clever, but I won't spoil those.

I've been told my several members of the book club that the movie is awful an I should skip it.

Note: I didn't use the "Teen" tag, because even though the characters are teens, I wouldn't recommend this book for teens. They wouldn't appreciate all the 80s references anyway. At least when I watch Happy Days, the 50s were only 20 years earlier.

John Dies at the End (Paragin)

The Dream Peddler by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) (2007)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection. I had never heard of it before, despite the 20-year later commentary added to this version. Honestly, I couldn't tell you which author name was on the cover. It was Jason Pargin on the Good Reads page. Apparently, it was a movie, too.

The fact that this started as a web serial in 2001 was interesting, and also explained the choppy nature of it (even if he did go back and edit it). Back in 2001, something like this was possible. It would be like the folks who pioneered self-publishing for a living on Amazon or who do serials now on their new service. It's something that I would've loved to have done had I had the time and the discipline to keep writing. Granted, I probably would've been lost in the shuffle and never advertised for readers.

Anyway, David Wong is being interviewed about some of the crazy stuff that he's seen, along with his friend John. Most of it defies the laws of physics as well as time and causality. It mostly has to do with this inky black gunk that gets into them and allows them to see things that other people don't notice. There's another dimension that's going to burst into this one and kill everyone. And they have to stop it.

It's strange, really out there, hard to follow (except, oddly, for the parts where people are erased and no one remembers them, including someone who would've been a main character in the beginning of the book, but he was erased in Las Vegas, but someone remembers shouting their name).

Spoiler: John never dies at the end. On the other hand, a lot of other people do. And many of them are replaced with shadows from the other dimension, except that they don't know that they are. The replacements appear to be exactly who the person looking at them expects them to be -- but if that person had never seen them before, their head fills in their own details. These may not match what others see, so that's one way to detect them.

This isn't a book I would've picked up. And if I had, I probably would've nave stayed with it if it weren't for the book club meeting ... which I missed because Family Movie Night ran long, and I don't skip out on Family Movie Night. That's me.

The next book was creepy, but I blew through it pretty quickly.

The Only Good Indians (Jones)

The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones (2020)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was the book group's pick for September, and I read it already. It was a bit of a quick read, and a strange one as well. I'm not that much into horror, so this was a little out there. (That said, the historical romance a few months ago wasn't what I generally read, either, but that wasn't so bad.)

It starts with a Blackfoot Indian named Ricky, who has left his reservation, leaving a bar to pee outside because there's too long of a line inside. Out in the lot, an elk starts jumping on and damaging trucks. When angry bargoers head outside, all they see is an Indian, so they want to get the Indian. Ricky tries to flee the angry mob and almost makes it, except he runs into a herd of elk. That's the last we hear of Ricky. Next thing we hear, he's been killed by the mob.

Next we get to Lewis who's been off the reservation for a decade and trying to live a normal life. He's a postal worker and his girlfriend Peta directs planes at the airports with those two big lit cones. Lewis is trying to fix a light and while looking through a fan, he sees the image of an elk on the floor. He falls off the ladder but Peta saves him. Life suddenly starts getting weird as Lewis is obsessed with the elk. Enter Shaney, a Crow woman working at the Post Office. She can see the elk in the floor and even helps lay down tape to outline it.

Lewis confesses to Shaney about the night nearly a decade ago that he and three friends, Ricky (now deceased), Cassidy and Gabe, illegally shot up a bunch of elk on a part of the reservation where they weren't supposed to be. One that Lewis shot was pregnant and kept jumping back up to protect her calf. I can't relate to the scene so I can't really relate it here. However, Lewise thinks he's being haunted by that mother elk. He swore that every piece of her would be used, and now he's wondering if all these years later, some elder found a piece of that elk wrapped in the back of their freezer and gave it to the dogs.

Speaking of dogs, Lewis's dog gets killed and it was stomped, like by an elk, but an elk couldn't get in the garage. He discovers that his own boots were used to do the deed, and concludes that it was either Peta or Shaney that had done it. It takes a turn for the weirder when [SPOILERS] he kills both of them as runs off with a elk calf that he cut out of Peta (with whom he had unprotected sex just a couple of nights ago.)

He's shot down by militia who are out looking for him along with the state police. The calf isn't collected and runs away.

The story then shifts again to the reservation where Cassidy and Gabe live. Cass has a Crow girlfriend, Jo, who's turned his life around, and Gabe is enstranged from his daughter, Denorah, who lives with her mother and her new dad. The elk calf has grown into a girl and then a woman (who looks like Shaney and calls herself that). The elk woman plots revenge to kill everyone, including their cubs.

Much death ensues. It drags out a little toward the end, trying to get to a lake and ending up in the same ditch where the story started all those years ago, coming full circle.

It seemed a little disjointed to me, jumping all over the point from one POV to another. Also the elk woman parts were written in Second Person, just to add the the confusion. I can see the draw for horror fans, but this wasn't my cup of tea.

The Anomaly (Ruger)

The Anomaly by Michael Rutger (2018)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

One of the quickest reads in quite a while. I was trying to finish before an online book club meeting that a colleague was organizing, but I just wasn't able to get there in time. It started a little slow for me but picked up quickly. I spent a few hours Friday and Saturday finishing off about half the book. Not a usual thing for me. I also nearly dropped my iPad reading the same page at bedtime. This, unfortunately, is usual for me, and why I really should read on my phone more often.

The story is basically what if The X-Files was actually a bunch of You-Tubers with their own show and a handful of conspiracy viewers. There's probably a better analogy, but the closest I thought of was "Ghost Hunters", which I don't watch, and I couldn't tell you the names of others.

You could also toss in a little bit of Indiana Jones.

Nolan Moore is the "hero" of the piece. He's the on-air talent, explaining conspiracies, and looking for answers, which the crew doesn't usually find. But that's fine, so long as people kept searching. Once things are known, people will stop searching.

The crew goes to the Grand Canyon to search for a cave found a century ago by another explorer, G. E. Kincaid, who reported findings to the Smithsonian, but everything there has been retracted, buried or denied. The crew consists of Ken and Molly (I forget their exact roles, Ken is the producer?) and Pierre (the cameraman). Along with them are Gemma, a reporter doing a story on Nolan, and Feather, a young hippie-type representative from the new sponsor of the program that's paying for the second season. Finally, there's Dylan, who pilots their raft down the river.

The story unfolds slowly and the group is about to give up when Pierre spots a discoloration in the rock, purely by accident. They climb up and in and eventually find a shaft, bringing them up to the level when Kincaid said the cave should be. The entrance is sealed with rocks and mortar. They didn't want this place to be found.

This level, and the shaft that brought them up here were not natural but the works of man ... or someone. This is an important find, and Nolan is content to let the "big boys" have at it to preserve the integrity of the site. But it wouldn't hurt to have a little look, right? They earned it, and the camera is rolling. And they need footage.

They find a corridor into a large chamber. And then thanks to an accident, they get sealed in. They have little food and water with them. And things are about to get strange.

It gets weird and creepy after that, and you're never too sure if someone will lie or die. (Spoiler: it's not an absolute, to-the-last-man bloodbath.) You wonder if Nolan will develop feelings for the no-nonsense, this-is-all-bunk Gemma, especially since he's split from his wife Kristy. And you wonder who, or what, is working against them.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Glad I read it. There's a sequel, that maybe I'll look into.

Library e-book.

The Society for the Preservation of CJ Henderson (Ackley-McPhail & Schauer, ed)

The Society for the Preservation of CJ Henderson Danielle Ackley-McPhail & Greg Schauer, ed (2014)

Disclosure: I've met CJ Henderson. I would have to say I knew of him, more than that I knew him. He was a fixture at a science fiction convention I'd gone to almost every year for over two decades. I can't say how much I'd actually talked to him in that time, but he was a person you could talk to, whether in the Dealers Room during the day or the Con Suite in the evening.

I can also add that in 2014, I was in his house with many other people, but he was only there in spirit. When CJ died in 2014, family and friends held an "Afterlife Launch Party" in his honor. The family had hoped for a large turnout, but many that he knew from the convention circuit lived anywhere in the tristate area as well as up and down the Eastern seaboard (and elsewhere, too, but those were the ones likeliest to make it). I also learned that he lived about a 15 minute walk from my house. So I made the trip, and met a lot of familiar faces, and a few not-so-familiar. I discovered a couple days after that I'd met a favorite artist of mine without knowing it was him. But I digress.

This anthology was put together when CJ was ill. He had even seen most (if not all) of it but didn't get to see it published. Shame on me for waiting three years to finish it, but I have a habit of putting down anthologies in the middle (because I can), reading something else that came along, and then getting back to the first book. (In my defense, Danielle, if you're reading this, some of those books were other eSpecbooks!)

The anthology includes stories by John L. French, Jean Rabe, Patrick Thomas, David Boop, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jeff Young, Leona Wisoker Robert M. Price, Leona Wisoker, and James Chambers, and CJ's presence is felt in all of them. Stories are inspired by his works or his mythos and feature either a character based on one of his or a character based him CJ himself. (He appears in one story as himself, in another as a bard who is the son of Hender, etc.). All of pleasant to read -- with one exception. The foreword for one story included a warning that Henderson himself would've found the story disturbing, and warns the reader might wish to skip that one. I prefer to avoid disturbing things -- I have enough trouble sleeping -- so I skipped over that one.

Hard to pick a favorite, but I might possibly pick the lead-off story just for setting the tone for the rest of the book. But a later story hits home the theme of perseverance, particularly if you want to be a writer. If I didn't want to be a writer, I might not be writing these reviews. I'm not always sure whom I'm writing this reviews for: myself or the wandering web surfer? Never count out the flying monkeys.

Enjoyable anthology, possibly disturbing.