November 9, 2023 · 1:00 am

Winter Worries: A Review of Driving in the Dark

Book cover for Driving in the Dark by Jack Harding. Image on cover shows a dark country road from the perspective of someone driving on it at night. You can just barely make out the road, the pine trees on either side of the road, and the starry night sky above. It is all very, very dark as if this is set in a very rural area where few people drive. Title: Driving in the Dark

Author: Jack Harding

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 6, 2021

Genres:  Psychological Horror, Paranormal, Holiday, Mystery, Contemporary

Length: 24 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and 29 year old analyst Riley Coupland has just wrapped-up work for 12 whole days. There’s something in his bag. Something silver, something shiny and glittering with hopes and dreams of a bright and beautiful future. The only thing standing between him and his soon to be fiancée Emma is his arduous, mind-numbing drive home.

But something isn’t right. His phone, his hearing, the music, the traffic, everything just seems out of sync and off, and Riley can’t quite put his finger on it.

All he has to do is keep his eyes on the road…

All he has to do is take it slow…

In this brooding and deeply moving short story by Jack Harding, buckle up and settle down for a journey that will stir your senses and pull on your heart strings, keeping you guessing right until the end of the road.

Review:

Content Warning: Car accident.

There’s no better feeling than finally getting to rest after weeks of hard work.

Riley’s character development was handled nicely. There were times when I connected with him and other scenes when I was irritated by how distractible he could be. Yes, it’s understandable to lose focus on a long drive home after working all day, but as an experienced driver he knew that this was one of his faults and that a cold winter night is not the best time for daydreaming. Characters don’t have to be perfect to be memorable, though, and I’ll certainly remember him for a long time.

I thought there were too many clues about what was going on during Riley’s long, lonely ride home as his Christmas vacation began. Anyone who is already familiar with certain horror tropes will probably figure out the twist pretty early on. As that was a major part of what made this story so interesting, I would have loved to been challenged to figure it out with less foreshadowing. This was especially true near the beginning when there was a throwaway line that all but told the audience exactly what to expect.

With that being said, this was a great example of why psychological horror can be so effective at frightening its audience. Sometimes all you need to feel fear is to imagine driving down a quiet winter road at night when hardly anyone else is out and the night sky looms overhead menacingly. There are plenty of ways such a journey can go wrong without any classic horror antagonists showing up, and I though the author did a good job of showing how sometimes the most ordinary experiences in life can also be the most horrifying ones.

Driving in the Dark was chilling.

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November 8, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something You Believed But Found Out Wasn’t True

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

When I was seven, my parents moved our family a few thousand miles away from where we had previously been living. Since we were homeschooled at the time, my siblings and I didn’t have to say goodbye to classmates or teachers. We couldn’t bring all of our friends and relatives with us, though, so that was still an adjustment.

Cartoon image of a little girl who is holding a green umbrella and yellow satchel and wearing an orange raincoat. The wind is blowing against her so hard that her umbrella has been turned inside out!

Image credit: cromaconceptovisual

After we moved, I thought about my maternal grandmother a lot. In my WWBC karma post last month, I talked about how much everyone loves her.  She was (and still is) the quintessential grandma: gentle, kind, soothing, adores children, and will feed you warm, homemade chocolate chip cookies if you like them.

I was allowed to play or read as I pleased after our daily lessons were finished, so I had a generous amount of time to try to figure life out.

Sometimes when I missed my grandmother terribly and it was windy enough to carry sound* I’d stand on a local hill and yell loving messages to her.** I thought that maybe she could hear the faintest whisper of my words if I yelled loud enough and if the wind was blowing especially fast that day.

I imagined her bent over in her large, friendly garden harvesting corn or picking strawberries only to pause and wonder if she’d really heard her granddaughter yelling her name or if she was just imagining it. Perhaps she’d smile and blow me a kiss or yell back her own message, too.

It took another year or two for me to learn enough from my science textbooks to realize sound doesn’t work that way, but it was a comforting thought while it lasted.

*At that age I thought wind could somehow carry sounds long distances if you made your words strong and loud enough to last the entire journey. Don’t ask me how that was supposed to work!

** I apologize to any neighbours who may have been terribly confused by why a kid was loudly yelling “I love you, Grandma” and “I miss you, Grandma”  over and over again outside. Those messages were intended for her ears only.

(We moved back to her area several years later, so this tale has a happy ending).

 

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November 7, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Titles That Would Make Great Newspaper Headlines


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to Cathy @ What Cathy Read Next for coming up with this topic. It’s a unique one.

I’d sure want to read all of these newspaper headlines. Many of them could easily appear in a regular newspaper, while others would work best if written by a reporter who lived in a speculative fiction universe.

Some weeks I can only come up with four or five answers, so this time I’ll happily be going over the limit to help make up for that.

A black man sitting at a table and reading a newspaper. He has a serious, thoughtful expression on his face and has just looked up to make eye contact with the reader when this shot was taken. He’s sitting bedside a large picture window that has the blinds drawn, but it’s such a sunny day that you can still see lots of light pouring into the room. 1. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

2. 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth and Other Useful Guides by Matthew Inman

3. I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It by Adam Selzer

4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

5. By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters

6. The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

7. The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War by James Hider

8. 15 Days Without a Head by Dave Cousins

9. How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

10. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
by Lindsey Fitzharris

11. Making Mummies, Shrinking Heads: And Other Useful Skills by Pat Murphy

12. First You Write: The Worst Way to Become an Almost Famous Author And The Best Advice I Got While Doing It by Joni Rodgers

13. Great Gals: Inspired Ideas for Living a Kick-Ass Life by Summer Pierre

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November 2, 2023 · 1:00 am

Making the Best of Things: A Review of The Burning Land

Book cover for The Burning Land by Jeff Brackett. Image on cover is a painting of a wooden ship sailing on a sea that is bathed in yellow light. Title: The Burning Land

Author: Jeff Brackett

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 3, 2016

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 26 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Arik is Kapin of “The Serpent”, a sailing ship on a far-away world of green skies and orange seas. And though technically the leader of their expedition, he knows the true power on board lies in the hands of his only passenger – the Seer, Uson Grogor. Arik and Uson lead the crew across the vastness of the ocean, risking the lives of the crew as they sail past the point at which their supplies might still get them home, all based on the visions of the old Seer.

Review:

Content Warning: Pregnancy, deaths from animal attacks, and a fatal spaceship accident.

Failure is a stepping stone to success.

Now this is an example of how to write a memorable dual-perspective story! I don’t want to give away too many details about how a ship sailing across the ocean could be related to a spaceship travelling through space to a new planet, but I loved the way the author connected these two storylines. The parallels between them were evident almost immediately, and I only became more curious about how they might intersect as I  grew closer to the conclusion.

I would have liked to see more character development. While I wouldn’t expect to see as much of it in something this size as I would in a full-length novel,  it would have been nice to have more examples of how the characters grew and changed as a result of their experiences. This is something I’m saying as a reader who otherwise loved this tale and would have given it a five-star rating if I knew the characters better and could point out their personal development over time in clearer ways.

The world building was exciting and well done.  I learned more than information about the Earth-like world the explorers landed on in order to picture it clearly in my mind, but I also found myself wishing the author would write a sequel to explore things in even greater detail. The differences in the flora and fauna in this world made me smile, and that’s not even to mention the many different ways people reacted to these new life forms.

The Burning Land made me yearn for more.

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November 1, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Celebrity People Say I Look Like

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Ooh, this is a fun topic!

Can I assume that you all know who Shirley Temple, the beloved 1930s child star, is?

A photo of Shirley Temple when she was a little girl, maybe 6 years old. She’s grinning and wearing a blue dress with white lace trimming the collar and front portion of the dress. She has a cute little blue bow tied up around her curls, too.

For anyone who might not know her, this is what she looked like as a little girl.

This is what I looked like as a little girl:

A 1980s photo of two young siblings, ages about 4 and 2, who have been posed for a professional photo. The older girl child is me, Lydia. She has short, very curly brown hair and is wearing a light purple dress that has a large white collar with red trim on it. The little boy is my brother. He has short, straight, blond hair and is wearing a collared shirt that has a rainbow pattern.

(That sweet little boy next to me is one of my brothers. I’ll leave it up to him to identify himself further if he wishes to).

I have memories of older women stopping my mother in department stores to coo over my curls and tell us how much they thought I looked like Shirley Temple.

And, yeah, I can see the resemblance.

 

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October 31, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Things I Love About Halloween


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates it! This is my favourite holiday of the year, so I’m thrilled to see October 31 come around again on the calendar.

In previous years, I’ve blogged about My Favourite Halloween Treats, Halloween Picture Books, and Halloween Things I’ve Never Done  for Top Ten Tuesday’s Halloween Freebie post.

This time I’m going to talk about why I love this holiday so much, especially since I wasn’t allowed to celebrate it as a kid as I’ve mentioned before.

So what’s so fantastic about this holiday?

1. Presents Aren’t Needed

It’s a relief to celebrate without being expected to give or receive gifts. I have a lot of mixed feelings about that tradition.

Two white people are each holding up a sugar cookie that has been decorated for Halloween. One cookie is shaped like a ghost and the other one a skeleton. 2. Candy and Baked Goods

Halloween candy and baked goods are delicious. If I receive something I can’t eat for allergy reasons, there are a lot of other people who can eat it and who wouldn’t mind taking it home.

3. Free Expression

This is the only time of year when it’s socially acceptable for adults to dress in costumes (unless you’re going to a comic conference or something). I love having the freedom to be anyone I want for that night…even if, truth be told, most Halloween nights find me no longer dressing up at all.

4. You Can Eat Anything 

I enjoy cooking, but I do not like the pressure that can come on other holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas to follow a rigid menu and make all of the dishes the exact same way every time. There is no set menu for Halloween. You could eat pizza, samosas, Pad Thai, or a nice, big salad if you wish!

5. Halloween Music

Don’t tell anyone, but I start listening to Halloween playlists in September. I love jumping around from lighthearted kids’ songs to the season finale song of Supernatural to all sorts of other spooky music.

6. Autumn Is Gorgeous 

I love walking through crunchy leaves in the park and seeing the brilliant red, yellow, orange, and occasionally purple leaves still clinging to their trees or bushes.  Halloween is often pretty close to peak colour here in Toronto, so this is yet another reason why I love this holiday.

7. Ghost Stories 

Whether I’m going on a ghost tour, reading a ghost story, or watching a paranormal film, I think it’s interesting to explore the spirits’ motives for haunting a particular location.

A jack-o-lantern is sitting in a patch of glass. There is a candle inside of the lantern that is making it glow orange and yellow. It’s dark outside, so few other details can be seen other than the lush grass it is sitting on. 8. Carving Pumpkins

Am I good at it? Not really, but it’s still amusing. When else are you going to have permission to play with food? (Or potential food, rather).

9. Acknowledgement of Death

A friend of mine died in a car accident when we were in high school. One of the weirdest parts of that experience for me was how quickly people stopped talking about him. We were all grieving, and of course I respected everyone who found it too hard to discuss him or his accident. Halloween is a relief to me because it’s one time of year when more folks are willing to broach such topics and remember the dead.  Yes, there is pain in those moments…but over time there can also be so much joy to be found in retelling funny or touching stories about those who are no longer with us.

10. Fear Is Fun In Small Doses When You’re Not Really In Danger

Wow, that was a wordy sentence! But, yeah, I do see the value in feeling a little fear from a spooky movie or ghost story when you know that it is 100% fiction. This is such a different feeling than being afraid of something or someone who could actually harm you.

 

 

 

 

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October 26, 2023 · 1:00 am

A Review of Wilhelmina Quigley – Monkey See, Monkey Do

Book cover for Wilhelmina Quigley - Monkey See, Monkey Do by Liese Sherwood-Fabre. Image on cover shows a drawing of a blue and green stuffed toy monkey sitting on a jack-o-lantern. The monkey is wearing a black scarf and a black witch’s hat that has a gold buckle on it. Its left arm is raised as if to wave a friendly hello to the audience. Title: Wilhelmina Quigley – Monkey See, Monkey Do

Author: Liese Sherwood-Fabre

Publisher: Little Elm Press (Self-Published)

Publication Date: June 5, 2023

Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 32 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A young witch with unpredictable powers. A complex transformation spell. What could possibly go wrong?

Following a magical mishap, Wilhelmina Quigley accidentally transforms her classmate, Fynn, into a monkey. With a frightened Fynn running from those who could help him, Wilhelmina sets off on an extraordinary adventure to recapture and transform the monkey back to a boy. From incantation blunders to misfired spells, each step along the way brings laughter, surprises, and valuable lessons about self-discovery.

“Wilhelmina Quigley: Monkey See, Monkey Do” is a captivating short story that will whisk readers away to a realm where anything is possible and where the most important lessons are learned when you believe in your own abilities. Join Wilhelmina on her extraordinary quest and prepare to be spellbound by the enchantment that unfolds page after page.

If you enjoy humorous fantasy stories about young witches, get this story now.

Review:

Embarrassment is part of life.

Wilhelmina was a well-written and amusing protagonist. She talked and behaved exactly how a kid her age should, and some of the things she did made me shake my head as I remembered my own middle school blunders that were horribly embarrassing at the time but that I can now find the humour in. It can be difficult to capture that awkward, in-between stage of life accurately, so I have to commend Ms. Sherwood-Fabre for pulling it off.

I would have loved to see more world building in this short story. For example, Wilhelmina‘s teacher struck me as a rather exasperated and impatient person. Was this because the teacher was having a bad day, the magical society they lived in was not very forgiving of honest mistakes due to the high stakes of misused magic, or that bad moods were a side effect of spells going horribly wrong? I could see arguments for any of these explanations and a few more besides them, but the text never explained what was going on here. Having that answer could have helped fill in some holes for me about how their culture was different from all of the non-magical ones out there.

With that being said, the humor and low stakes here were delightful. So many of the fantasy and Halloween stories I review have high stakes and bloody battles that it was refreshing to sit back and see how a young witch learned from her mistakes and tried to make them right again. Not everything has to be about saving the world, after all! Sometimes trying to turn a classmate back into a kid again before the school day ends  is all the tension one needs to enjoy a plot.

Wilhelmina Quigley – Monkey See, Monkey Do was a gentle little Halloween-themed tale that both kids and adults can enjoy.

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October 25, 2023 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: If You Could Create a Holiday, What Would It Be?

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

If I could create a holiday, I’d tell everyone to go take a hike. No, literally! We could call it National Nature Day or something.

One of the reasons why I struggle to enjoy many mainstream holidays is how consumeristic they tend to be. There have been times in my life when money was in very short supply and it was hard to come up with gifts for others that they would enjoy and that I could actually afford to give. Even when I can afford to buy gifts, I prefer to do so spontaneously and with items or experiences I know the recipient will genuinely enjoy.

Photo of a country road through a gorgeous autumn landscape filled with orange leaves on the trees and even more leaves coating the land below them. The sun is shining warmly on everything and making it look like the beginning of fairy country. It would be lovely to have a holiday that was purposefully designed to encourage spending time in nature with whoever you want to socialize with that day.

I don’t know about all of you, but I need more of both of those things.

Just go outside and enjoy nature in whatever way you can depending on your interests, current level of fitness, and how warm, cold, wet, or dry the weather report might be for the day.

It could involve hiking, nature walks, playing group or individual sports, rock climbing, birdwatching, photography, cycling, having a picnic, swimming, running through the leaves, playing catch with a dog, or similar activities.

Whatever outdoorsy stuff you’re into would count, and no one would be expected to do things outside of their comfort zone.

It sure sounds like a good way to spend a day to me.

 

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October 24, 2023 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: LGBTQ+ Horror Novels


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

An opened book is sitting next to a small pumpkin on a dusty wooden table. There is an illustration of some sort of gnome or other heavily-bearded figure on the right hand side of the page. It looks like an illustration from a dark fairy tale, maybe? Behind the book and pumpkin is a black candle and some orange and black sticks sitting in black pots. The original theme for this week was “atmospheric books.”

I was utterly stumped by it, so I’m going to turn my response into a Halloween post instead. Here are ten LGBTQ+ horror novels I have not read yet because I’ve lost a lot of interest in the horror genre since 2020.

When I do read horror these days, I avoid pandemic-related themes and am much less willing to read anything gory that I was in the past. (Granted, gore was only a rare and occasional part of what I read back then, but now I can do so much less of it than even that!).

It’s been almost four years with few if any adjustments to these mental rules for myself, so this might be a permanent change to my reading habits.

1. The Luminous Dead  by Caitlin Starling

2. Carmilla: The First Vampire by Amy Chu

3. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

4. Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

5. Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling

6. Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

7. Evergreen by Devin Greenlee

8. The Shadow of Oz by J. Michael Wright II

9. To Kill a Shadow by Katherine Quinn

10. Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

If you’ve read any of these, please feel free to tell me what you thought of them.

If you have other suggestions for Halloween and/or speculative fiction LGBTQ+ reads, I’d love to hear them, too.

Finally, if neither of those apply or if you’re in a chatty mood and want to answer multiple questions, tell me how the pandemic has (or hasn’t) changed your reading habits. I’ve spoken to several folks who had similar reactions to mine and wonder how common it is.

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October 19, 2023 · 1:00 am

A Review of Literally Life

Title: Literally Book cover for Literally Life - Solara and the Talking Tree by Hiago Furtado. Image on the cover shows a young, white woman with straight hair twirling around in a tutu in front of a blindingly white light. She looks as thought she may be performing on stage due to her dancing en pointe in ballet slippers and with her arms outstretched in a ballerina pose. Life – Solara and the Talking Tree

Author: Hiago Furtado

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: July 23, 2023

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy

Length: 54 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Review:

In a farm, far from the kingdom’s eyes, Solara, a lonely little girl who proclaims herself an enchanted princess, brings a nearby tree to life, even though her mother had previously forbidden her from using her powers, fearing they would label her as a witch. The tree, nicknamed by the girl as Mr. Tree, will have to discover its role in the world while maintaining a secret friendship with the little girl. Despite having enchanting powers, its disturbing origin and lack of control over them will bring forth various challenges.

And Solara, embittered by her mother’s disappearance, will try to have fun with Mr. Tree, telling him both epic and mind-bending stories, as well as tragic and macabre ones, in order to help him and teach him about his magical nature. In this chaotic journey, where unknown entities control nature and magical beings are persecuted by prejudice, the two will seek to discover if there is truly a place for fantasy in a world where their mere existence is considered a crime.

Content Warning: Death.

Magic isn’t a toy.

Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that compared Solara’s and Mr. Tree’s innocent wonder. They had far more in common with each other than one might originally think, and it was fun to take note of the myriad of ways in which a roughly ten-year-old human child and a tree that has only recently become sentient will have the same reaction when confronted with something new. I love picking out the commonalities between character who are otherwise quite different from each other, and I had plenty of opportunities to do that here.

The world building was confusing to me. Since Mr. Tree had a limited perspective on things due to him being a tree who couldn’t physically move around and who didn’t always understand human culture, his understanding of how magic worked in this world didn’t always translate well for me as a reader. I sometimes struggled to understand the logic of his thought processes or why certain scenes played out the way they did. As much as I wanted to give this a higher rating, I couldn’t due to how many times I had to stop and try to figure out what this character was describing.

With that being said, I enjoyed the creative risk Mr. Furtado took by making his main character a plant whose mind was quite different from the mind of the average person. It gave this tale a memorable twist and made me look at everything from chickens to fences to dreaming in new ways. This was my second time reading his work, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for what he might come up with next due to how much effort he puts into writing imaginative stories.

Literally Life – Solara and the Talking Tree made me smile.

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