Book Review – We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

We Were Liars

We Were Liars is a 2014 young adult mystery thriller novel by E. Lockhart. The story follows Cadence Eastman, a teenage girl who is part of a large, wealthy, and influential family, the Sinclairs. She spends every idyllic summer on Beechwood Island, privately owned by her family and situated near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, upon which her grandfather built homes for himself, all of his daughters, and their families to stay in. She would spend much of these summers with her cousins Johnny and Mirren and Johnny’s best friend Gat, who is invited to come along every year. Together, the four of them are known as the “Liars.” The summer of her fifteen year, Cady had a whirlwind romance with Gat, experiencing a sense of love that dulled the pain of her parents’ divorce.

However, that’s all Cady remembers of that summer. She had an accident, though she doesn’t remember the cause, and now she suffers from crippling migraines. Gat was nowhere to be seen as she recovered in hospital, none of her family wants to talk to her about what happened, and it’s been two years since she last visited the island. Relishing the chance to reconnect with her cousins and her beloved Gat, despite the pain of him disappearing on her, she is determined to find out what happened to her that fateful summer.Read More »

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Book Review – Where Have You Gone Without Me? by Peter Bonventre

Where Have You Gone Without Me

Where Have You Gone Without Me? is a recently published crime thriller novel by Peter Bonventre, a longtime journalist and award-winning sportswriter. The story follows Eddie Sabella, a 37-year-old hot shot reporter and columnist at a tabloid newspaper in New York City. The year is 2006, when a local church is rocked by a supposed miracle: their statue of St. Joseph appears to be crying real tears. Eddie gets an exclusive thanks to a tip and at first things play out like any other story for him, who is ever on the prowl for the next subject of his column. It soon becomes the story of a lifetime, however, after the statue is stolen, putting Eddie in contact with a colourful cast of characters including restaurateurs, aging mobsters, and a long lost love who up and disappeared on him 15 years before.Read More »

Book Review – The Night Will Find Us by Matthew Lyons

The Night Will Find Us

The Night Will Find Us is a newly published horror novel by Matthew Lyons, and my first Frighteningly Good Read for 2020. Six teenagers embark on an end-of-school-year camping trip into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, a million-acre forest in the heart of the state. Just as they’re setting up camp, a fight between two of them turns ugly, splintering the group. Shaken by this fatal turn of events and finding that the path back out has somehow disappeared, they slowly learn that other people are the least of their worries. Something dead and dreaming lies at the bottom of a lake in the centre of the forest, and it doesn’t want them to leave.Read More »

Movie Review – Us

UsPoster

Us is a 2019 horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. As a child, Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) had a traumatic experience after wandering off from her parents at a boardwalk carnival. Wandering into a house of mirrors, where the power cuts out, she encounters another little girl who appears to be her exact double. Years later, still haunted by her childhood experience, Adelaide, her husband, and her two kids take a summer vacation to Adelaide’s family home in Santa Cruz, California, where she first had her harrowing experience. Their vacation is fraught with tension, but takes a turn for the horrifying when they are besieged by their doppelgangers, who suddenly outside their door in the middle of the night.Read More »

Book Review – Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink

Alice Isn’t Dead is the latest novel by Joseph Fink, adapting his podcast series of the same name. This novel marks Fink’s first solo outing as an author, usually teaming up with Jeffrey Cranor for the novels based on the podcast series they created together, Welcome to Night Vale.

The novel follows Keisha Taylor, a woman working as a trucker who is searching for her wife Alice, who went missing some time before Keisha started trucking. After months of searching and turning up nothing Alice was presumed dead. Keisha mourned and tried to work through her grief, until she started to notice something strange during news reports of tragedies and accidents across America: always in the background, never the focus, was Alice staring right into the camera. Alice wasn’t dead, and Keisha meant to find her wife, uncovering clues in Alice’s personal documents pointing to Bay and Creek Transportation. Following these leads further she embarks upon a road trip into a world that exists on the backroads and highways of the country full of misshapen creatures, otherworldly forces, and conspiracies that go well beyond a simple missing person.Read More »

Movie Review – Don’t Breathe

IMDB Summary

Rocky, a young woman wanting to start a better life for her and her sister, agrees to take part in the robbery of a house owned by a wealthy blind man with her boyfriend Money and their friend Alex. But when the blind man turns out to be a more ruthless adversary than he seems, the group must find a way to escape his home before they become his newest victims.

dontbreatheposter

Directed by Fede Alvarez and starring Jane Levy, Stephen Lang, Dylan Minnette and Danial Zovatto, Don’t Breathe is an American horror thriller film released on August 26, 2016.

Before I knew anything about the film I noticed its unassuming poster at the theatre. It caught my eye, but otherwise seemed to be generic horror movie fare. As can uncannily happen, however, soon afterwards I started to hear a lot of the buzz that the movie started generating. This got my butt into a theatre seat and I am very happy with how things turned out.Read More »

Comic Book Review – Judge Vol. 1 & 2

This past week I started the manga series Judge by Yoshiki Tonogai. The series is a drama, horror, and psychological thriller. It is the sequel to the series Doubt, which was written and illustrated by Yoshiki Tonogai as well. Though it is a sequel series, as far as I can tell Judge is not narratively connected to Doubt. Each volume was published in North America by Yen Press in August and November 2013 respectively. The series will total six volumes long, with the fifth coming out this October.Read More »