Book Review: IT WAS HER HOUSE FIRST

Title: It Was Her House First

Author: Cherie Priest

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press

Pages: 349

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Bartholomew Sloan, a celebrity detective who never loses a case, becomes the sole heir to the home and estate of his best friend, Oscar Amundson, who was executed by the court for the murder of his wife, the silent era star Venita Rost. Venita was found dead at the bottom of a rocky overlook, supposedly murdered by Oscar. Sloan believes that she died by suicide and framed Oscar because he didn’t blame Sloan for the death of their eight-year-old daughter, Priscilla.

When Sloan enters the Amundson house after Oscar’s execution, he drinks a peg of his favourite gin, which the couple always stocked for him, and drops down dead.

In the present time, Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Mitchell, a woman with severe anxiety issues, buys the house sight unseen with the insurance money from her brother’s untimely death. Ronnie doesn’t know that Venita haunts the house, along with Sloan, the man she hated the most. Then a man comes along, Coty Deaver, Sloan’s grandnephew, with strange intentions regarding the house. Will Ronnie’s dream of a forever home come true? Or does she face danger from both the living and the dead?

 

The story is written in the past tense PoV of Sloan and Venita (in the form of a diary) in 1932, and that of Ronnie in the present time.

 

WHAT I LIKED/WHAT I DIDN’T:

I love stories set in old houses, and I was looking forward to this read. In keeping with the theme of renovation, there is a scene (and this isn’t a spoiler) where everything that Venita’s ghost touches appears restored to its full glory. I liked this extension of the theme.

I liked Venita from the diary. The mix of personal observation and dialogue was interesting.

I liked the last part of the book, when all the main characters came together, more than anything that preceded it.

I liked the writing. Here’s a sample:

On a staged performance of spinning plates, thirty might pirouette correctly—but if even one should wobble and fall, the magic is shattered and the trick has failed.

Naïve is a word that powerful people use to shut you up.

Heavy and limp, like a fortune teller’s pendulum

 

The author did a fine job with the description of the house but didn’t quite manage to create a sense of menace or dread, which was absolutely required in a haunted house story. The scenes relating to the remodeling of the house were interesting at first. But then they just went on and on. The narrative took a long time, nearly the 67 percent mark, to get to the point. The ghost story should have started playing early in the book.

 

I didn’t know what to make of Ronnie. She narrowly missed being insufferable thanks to her sense of humour. But she could have been fleshed out better. She doesn’t google the house, even though the real estate agent pointedly tells her to. She tells us about losing her brother, about feeling crushing guilt with reference to his death, but then she doesn’t give him much of a thought, except in relation to Kate, Ben’s fiancée, and Coty. While Ronnie acknowledges her loneliness in a roundabout way, the themes of grief, regret and guilt aren’t fleshed out enough, given that Venita too is grappling with grief and Sloan with guilt.

Also, while Sloan seems to keep raising the matter of Ronnie’s sexual orientation, just because of her nickname, her profession and the way she carries herself, Ronnie herself shows nothing of the kind. There’s no talk of past partners, lovers, nothing. Surprising, given that she is in her mid-forties. Not even one line saying she’s single, whether by compulsion or by choice. In fact, the first time, she meets Anne, Ronnie tells us that the woman is a lesbian plumber. That meeting is unremarkable. Days later, however, when Ronnie has to tinker with the pipes to get the water running, she tells us that she knows what to do as she had observed the “cute plumber” at work. Cute? Where did that come from? No attraction was visible at the first meeting.

The back story regarding Ben isn’t introduced organically. Ronnie tells us readers the story directly.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

Ronnie never reveals the insurance amount but she keeps investing in renovation and repair activities, as if the money is limitless.

 

The blurb wasn’t entirely true. For the most part, Venita’s spirit is too silent, displaying no malevolence. Nor is the house teeming with paranormal activity, so the claim that the “once-beautiful home that's claimed countless unlucky souls” is just as false. Inspector Bartholomew Sloan is referred to as Venita’s “eternal nemesis” which again makes no sense as, in the afterlife, he is quiet for the most part, exhibiting no nemesis-like actions. “And a deadly game unfolds” – again, not quite.
“Caught between a vengeful ghost and a ruthless living threat, Ronnie's scepticism crumbles. The line between living and dead isn't as sharp as it seems, and she realizes too late that in Venita's house, survival might be just an illusion.” Only half-true. The living threat was ruthless but the ghost showed no malevolence towards Ronnie.

 

The long list of items that Ronnie says can potentially scare her didn’t sound natural. It sounded like something downloaded off the Internet. And then, having mentioned this long list, suddenly Ronnie isn’t worried about anything, despite being off her medication.

 

I found it odd that both Venita and Sloan referred to Priscilla as a duckling. Twice each. Separately. In their own individual accounts, not in conversation. How strange is that! 

 

ALL SAID AND DONE: The premise of this book, with themes transcending life and death and the value of a soul, was interesting, but the execution didn’t quite do it for me. If only there had been more of Venita and Sloan and less of the home improvement show.

  

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE ANGRY GHOST AND OTHER STORIES

Title: The Angry Ghost and Other Stories

Author: Peter Spokes

Publisher: Matador

Pages: 521

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

The stories in this collection contain a mix of horror tropes, including ghosts, monsters, werewolves, the walking dead etc.

The style of the writing dates the stories, setting them in the past. Each story is well told, propped up by the sense of atmospheric menace that marks a good ghost story. They give us the impression that we are safe, but only just.

Some of the stories display self-awareness of horror as a genre. A narrator in one story describes Lovecraft as his favourite author. Over and over, we also see rationalists realizing and acknowledging that ghosts exist.

1)      The Angry Ghost: Five members of the Ghost Club tell each other ghost stories that they make up. Michael, who is wheelchair bound following an accident, offers to tell a ghost story that is all too true. He claims that on a recent visit to a Cornwall village to find an unusual flower, he came to know of a ghost. A woman who jumped to her death in the icy lake on her wedding day when her beloved fiancé failed to show up for their wedding. For the last 20 years, the ghost has been haunting the lake on the anniversary of the wedding. While the basic story was something I’d heard before, here it was elevated to a tender love story.

2)      A Strange Occurrence: Four friends, a judge, a psychologist, a Cambridge physicist, and a rationalist, gather at the Archive Room of a library. Samuel, the rationalist, talks about the sighting of a ghostly hound. The hound belongs to Fr Bryan James. The previous story had a group of friends that enjoy ghost stories. Here we have friends who debunk them, preferring to believe in evidence. The tone of this story counters our scepticism, reminding us that stranger things have happened.

3)      The Ghosts of Kilronan: A rationalist, Monty, visits his birthplace at the invitation of Fr Ardal Fitzpatrick to talk about a case where a young child’s actions resulted in the death of their sister. Monty too is burdened with guilt at having caused the death of his younger sister, Rosie, when they were kids. The priest also wants him to investigate the presence of ghosts in the village.

4)      Flowers and Butterflies: was written from the PoV of an unlikely and unusual rescue worker.

5)      Happy Hallowe’en: The walking dead crew, Frank, Lucy, new boy Linus and narrator Michael, meet for a Halloween party where they compete for the best dressed character. This one was quite entertaining.

6)      A Dog Needs His Walk: A man says goodbye to his wife, and heads out for a walk with his dog, only to be struck by a realization.

7)      Back for Him: The narrator takes his grandfather, who has dementia, to an old lifeboat station from his past, to help him recuperate after an illness. There the old man is reminded of five of his friends who went out on a rescue mission during a storm and never returned. The descriptions in this story were so good, I actually visualized the scene. This story was about friendship, tenderness and old friends dearly missed.

8)      Rachel and the Beast: Rachel, a young police cadet, is out staking a criminal, a man known for brutally killing prostitutes, when the unexpected happens.

9)      The Trial of Gerald Blake: Gerald, a man who has killed several times, is led to the punishment he deserves. This story had a reference to the afterlife, but I wasn’t sure if it belonged in this collection.

10) Always April: A ghost unable to leave the cemetery in Queenstown, Ireland, tries to find out why the place has a hold on him. This story stresses that love is more powerful than death.

11) The Gift: A despotic ruler receives a gift, a living painting, from the pagans he is most cruel to.

12)      Under Isis: Ash returns home after years to avenge the murder of his parents and the burning of their home, and to find out who killed his uncle. He is no longer the boy of eleven who was afraid. Now he is a thing to be feared himself, if only he would acknowledge the truth about himself.

13)      Superheroes: This was a sweet tale about a young boy, Davey, who can’t understand why his older friends are slighting him. I loved this one.

14)      Number Eight: Nine-year-old Alex is Number Eight in an eight-member group studying rock caves as part of a tour. Afraid of monsters, she worries that she will be the first to be eaten. Midway through the tour, she needs to pee.

15)      The Museum of Fabulous Monsters: A watchman, working at the Museum of Fabulous Monsters and suffering from physical deformities himself, shows us his vulnerable side and the care he takes in ensuring that his pet is well fed. The story raises important questions about how society denies the humanity of those it sees as imperfect and hideous.

16)     Demosthenes: An investigation is initiated into the curious case of eight Greek students securing 100 percent in a plethora of subjects. Since the man who conducted the investigation, Silas Zacharias, has suddenly taken ill, his colleague, Trevor St John is asked to report the findings to a committee. St John, who has a pronounced stammer, begins to talk eloquently. How is that possible? This story was very entertaining.

17)     Just One Dear Friend: The body of Alphonse DeMara is found at the Museum, where he works, in the Hall of the Afterlife. It turns out that he had a heart attack, but Bobby, the narrator, knows that his dear friend, Alphonse, got some help from someone in the afterlife.

18)     Thick as Thieves: A security officer, Chris Gibson, connives with three thieves to steal some paintings from the place he is assigned to guard. Unfortunately for him, the plan goes awry. The paintings don’t get stolen, and the thieves end up killing one another. When Chris begins to see the ghosts of the thieves, demanding their payment, he wonders if it is because of the tumour in his head. This story was hugely entertaining.

19)     Alice and I: Fourteen-year-old twin sisters, Alice and the narrator, are playing on the branches of a tall tree when the branch snaps. The narrator breaks her sister’s fall and dies. Their parents, heartbroken, erase all evidence of her. The narrator, still haunting the house, can’t understand why. This one was poignant.

20)     Legend: Members of an ancient tribe are being ruthlessly hunted by monsters. The tribe has honour, courage and loyalty on its side. The monsters are brutal. It was only halfway through this story that I realized who the tribe is and who the monsters are.

21)     The Magic of Seagulls (As if in Her Shadow): Is she a beautiful woman or is she a seagull?

22)     The Corpse: A clever story of a murderer, who killed three young women, facing punishment. I was pleased when I guessed the identity of the narrator in the very first paragraph of the story.

23)     In Lepsa: Lowell, a former soldier and subsequent caretaker of wolves, is now a bestselling author of fantastic fiction in which the hero, named after his good friend, Ryker, battles vampires, zombies, demons and devils. Lowell is called to Lepsa to save the people from a werewolf who is terrorizing the village.

24) The Twin: A very interesting story about a dead twin, who goes about killing every person responsible for taking away his right to live.

25) That Difficult Age: A 15-year-old girl has just had an experience, her first, and is filled with anguish. We think it’s teenage hormones but it’s not.

26) Echoes of Chronus: An elderly man has a heart attack on seeing a blast from the past surface in the present.

27) Dreams and Maybe Hallucinations: A warm and tender story of a family able to pass on the gift of life thanks to a supernatural encounter.

28) Chinese Whispers: This story is written in the first person PoV of Lucifer.

29) Fire and Flames: The woods close to a village are supposed to be haunted because of a number of deaths that have occurred there. The lines between the sacred and the profane get blurred and it appears that the one has become the other. This was one of the longest stories in this book and it took its own sweet time coming to the point.

30) Let the Rats Feast: The story is written in the perspective of an unnamed narrator, who doesn’t remember who, much less what, he is. Beside him lies a wolf cub for whom he feels unexpected yet intense love.

31) Fish and Reminisce: A man has an encounter with a ghost but it isn’t quite how he thinks it is.

32) The Case of the Reverend Taplow: A reverend with a thirst for the forbidden. The story is written in the 3^rd person limited PoV of two characters. There was a fantastic twist at the end.

33) The Red Plains of Vigrior: I will not comment on this one as I don’t read fantasy.

34)  Terminus; A befitting end to this series of short stories, this story is an interesting take on the afterlife.

The stories I loved were Superheroes; Thick as Thieves; Alice and I; The Twin; Dreams and Maybe Hallucinations, and Fish and Reminisce.

The stories that didn’t work for me were: Flowers and Butterflies; The Trial of Gerald Blake; The Gift, and The Magic of Seagulls (As if in Her Shadow).

All in all, a good collection of short stories with far more hits than misses.

 (I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)

 

Book Review: BLASPHEMY

Title: Blasphemy

Author: Tehmina Durrani

Publisher: Penguin Books

Pages: 229

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

Pir Sain, the spiritual leader of Muslims in their local community, has died and his household is in grief. But for Heer, his widow, at 38 a grandmother and mother of three daughters and three sons, two of them dead, it is a new beginning. She says, My contract had terminated. A grip had loosened.

Heer was a 15-year-old schoolgirl, crushing on her best friend Chandi’s older brother Ranjha, when the 44-year-old Pir Sain offers to marry her. Heer’s mother, a widow, is thrilled. The alliance will make life smoother for Heer’s younger siblings, 14-year-old brother, Bhai, 13-year-old sister, Chitki, and 9-year-old sister, Nanni.

But marriage is a horror from the very start. A mountain of flesh descends on me is how she describes her wedding night. After her first experience of sex (read: rape), her husband calls her unclean and tells her to bathe and wash her hair. The next morning, he rapes her again, then beats her in full view of the extended family, the servants and the neighbours. He also spews obscene abuses and vile threats.

Her life is confined to the four walls of the haveli, and she tries hard to make her life round like everyone else’s is.

Will Heer ever get out of this hell, this nightmare, alive?

 

Within a few pages, we learn that this supposed man of God is anything but. Violence, sexual, physical and verbal, becomes routine for Heer. As her mother-in-law, Amma Sain, says, “Unintelligent violence makes the culprit resilient, stubborn and fearless.”

The charpai punishment is particularly brutal. But Heer's situation gets worse. Pir Sain is an utterly debauched man, who indulges in incest, paedophilia, and rape. He kills anyone who stands in his way, including his own son. He even pimps his wife out to strangers and films her in the act. And all along, Heer is punished brutally for the smallest of perceived crimes in a household where everyone watches her and is quick to tell tales.

 

It is interesting that the consolation offered to Heer, ‘May Allah give you patience to live a long life without a husband,” is perhaps meant as a curse, but is her first stab at freedom.

 

Death, the most dramatic event in our part of the world, had made them all theatrical.

The wailing became so loud it seemed as though we had lost Allah. Both the above quotes show how the authorial voice feels about authoritarian religion and culture.

I loved the metaphors and the similes. Heer tells herself to take her fears in like a hot green chilli, sharp, sharper, then gone.

She was hanging on like a loose tooth.

Heer describes her life as a beggar’s winter.

There are a few characters, but they leave a mark. There is Guppi, Heer’s oldest daughter, for whose safety Heer makes a terrible choice. There is Yathimri, the orphan girl who seeks to usurp Heer’s position. There is Cheel, who should have hated Pir Sain, but is his most devoted servant.

Pir Sain is evil personified, and yet he is deified by the ignorant and poor community, who imbue with sacredness the bones that Pir Sain has chewed the meat off, the earth he has stepped on, even his spit.

The hypocrisy of the system is seen in these lines. Unanswered prayers were forgotten, answered ones were called miracles. The crowds never thinned.

Reading Blasphemy was not an easy experience. I felt tortured as I read about the horrors that the women were subjected to, especially Heer, and, in time, 12-year-old Guppi and many other girls. We feel the pain of Heer as a mother when she tries to protect her daughter in the only way it seems possible under the circumstances. She feels horrified at what she has put Yathimri through.

As time passes by, the faces of the girls changes, and the sin becomes routine, and Heer, anxious to save her own daughters, becomes complicit in crime and sin. One by one, Pir Sain destroys everything good.  

It would be easy for us who have never had to face such a situation to blame Heer when the guilt should rest solely on Pir Sain. She says, Human beings have a natural reserve of evil and…it only takes circumstances for it to surface. Some people’s circumstances make smaller demands on their dormant evil. Like a case of Stockholm Syndrome, Heer begins to feel threatened by the very girl whose life is hell because of her decision.

Much as I liked the bulk of this novel, I was unconvinced by the speed with which the denouement was brought about. It seemed too pat, too easy. Also, I would have liked to know what happened to Ranjha, how he reacted after Heer’s marriage, his life over the 24-year-period. 

Book Review: YOU (YOU, #1)

Title: You (You, #1)

Author: Caroline Kepnes

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Pages: 464

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Having watched the series before I read the book, I couldn’t get Penn Badgley’s voice or persona out of my mind. And for once, I liked the series better.

 

From the moment that creative writing student Guinevere Beck (Beck, to friends) walks into Mooney’s Used and Rare bookshop, where Joe Goldberg is employed, he becomes hopelessly infatuated with her. The infatuation turns very quickly into obsession, as he stalks her physically and on social media. It’s an easy task, as Beck is an open book, always announcing her activities to the world on social media.

Beck, even as she begins to respond to Joe’s overtures, can’t get rich entrepreneur Benji, her not-really-boyfriend, out of her mind. She’s also too much in thrall of her college best friend, Peach Salinger. Joe will have to get rid of the hurdles in his path if he is to have a meaningful relationship with Beck. Fortunately, for him, he is quite adept and experienced at getting rid of the competition.

 

The story is written in the second person PoV—so hard to pull off, but pulled off spectacularly here—of Joe, addressing Beck directly from the first moment he claps eyes on her. What makes it scary is that even though the story is written in the second person, which means that Joe is technically writing to Beck, she is never going to be able to read this account. Therefore, he can be honest with her, and us. He is under no obligation to gatekeep his thoughts.

The whole narrative is one long interior monologue which serves as the framework for the action and the dialogue within. The run-on sentences show the state of his mind.

 

 

As a character, Joe is the most interesting I’ve encountered in a long time. He sees Beck for the first time, is overwhelmed and wants to pop in an Ativan. Right away, we know that he is a person of interest. The impression is confirmed soon enough as we see how deranged he can get.

Joe is devious and manipulative and not a guy you want to get on the wrong side of. For that matter, he’s not a guy you want to get on the right side of either, but Beck doesn’t know that.

Joe is clearly an overthinker, nimbly slipping secrets and revelations into his mental conversations with Beck.

What works in favour of Joe is that the others around him are equally unlikeable. Compared to Joe, the other characters—Peach, Benji, even Beck—come across as severely entitled and annoying. Granted that obsession doesn’t need any sound motive, but Beck was so not worth it. She was shallow, deceitful and not even a good writer. I can understand that the author wrote her like that to get us to feel conflicted about Joe, but he was smart enough to see that she wasn’t worth it.

 

The writing makes us find Joe fascinating and creepy in equal measure. But there are some aspects of Joe’s character that were hard to figure out. What’s with the typewriter he takes to bed?

 

There are multiple references to Stephen King as an author and to his books, The Shining and Doctor Sleep. The author goes all out to show her devotion to King’s oeuvre. Joe says, “Home soda will never be as popular as Stephen King.” Quite a bonus then that King appreciated Joe’s charms and this book.

Stephen King is not the only name to be dropped in this book. There are a number of bookish, musical and pop culture references strewn through the book. I found them overdone. At one point, Joe is effusive in his praise for Coke, while putting down Home Soda, Benji’s brand.

 

What didn’t sit right with me is that we hear nothing about any police investigations into the many deaths that dot the book. Why don’t the police look into where the victims’ phone has pinged off which towers? How come there is never any investigation? And these are wealthy people, not some hobos that no one cares about. Most of the cases are wrapped up so quickly, which seems unbelievably contrived.

Also the descriptions of the sex were very gratuitous, and unnecessary. Almost like erotica, which isn’t something I enjoy reading.

I would have liked it if Beck had had a few aces up her sleeve. But no, she was boring, and her only talent was apparently sex.

Book Review: THE SILENT WOMAN

Title: The Silent Woman

Author: Minka Kent

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 233

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Jade is married to Wells Westmore, the grandson of beautiful and enigmatic Hollywood actress Viviette Westmore. Jade and Wells reside in Westhaven, the sprawling estate that belonged to Viviette. Jade is blissfully happy with a husband she loves and a publishing contract to write the authorized biography of Viviette.

She tries not to think of Sylvie, Wells’ first wife, who is confined to the guesthouse on the estate. Sylvie is catatonic and violent and hasn’t spoken a word since her accident three years ago.

Jade has been told not to engage with Sylvie, as her condition is complex and she mustn’t suffer stress. But when the nurse is called away on a family emergency, Jade has no option but to step in and make breakfast for her husband’s first wife. Imagine her surprise when Sylvie gives her a small note with a single word, R-U-N, written on it. Now Jade is confused. Does Sylvie want to escape or is she warning Jade to run?

 

Part I is written in the first-person present tense PoV of Jade in the present time. Part II is written in the first-person present tense PoV of Sylvie three years ago. Part III reverts to Jade’s PoV again.

One quote I liked from this book:

…insecurities can be passed down generationally, finding their way into fissures and cracks until they’re buried so deep in our marrow they become second nature.

 

I lost interest in the story when Sylvie’s PoV started. It didn’t do anything to upset or upturn our understanding of the story. No twists at all. The account was boring, the writing humdrum, undoing the expectations raised in Jade’s account.

The antagonist didn’t exude a sense of menace. The book could have been better had we been able to see the antagonist’s evil play out in real time, but we don’t get to see it. Being told about it doesn’t have the same impact. I’m still not clear about why the antagonist did what they did.

Right at the outset, Jade gives us a detailed origin story about her writing. How she got into writing biographies of the rich and famous, because she enjoys ferreting out people’s secrets, and how she’s good at it. But when there is a mystery in her own life, she takes forever to unravel it.

One question that was left unanswered was: Why does Viviette’s journal contain a large paragraph about how evil Mary Claire is? Sure, the girl was rebellious and gave her mother a hard time, but that didn’t justify her being called manipulative. 

I’ve read Minka’s books before, but this one was a total disappointment.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)