Nick
I know I’m not the target audience, but I thoroughly enjoyed this story.
It had everything I could possibly want: black humor, body horror, Lovecraftian darkness, shame, guilt, love, sex, death…
One of my favorite things was how chronically online the main character was. That cracked me up so much.
This book wasn’t exceptionally bad, but I find myself struggling to come up with a single positive
I really love Hailey Piper's writing. This is my second book of hers and won't be the last. With this one, there were a few parts that lost me, but I loved it overall. The ending was incredibly beautiful.
In the first story, a character says of the genre, “In horror, it’s often what you leave out that gives a story its power.” This phrase does a lot of heavy lifting for some of the stories contained in this collection. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the horror in the book is super unsettling and leaves the reader wanting more.
Just one more thing I’d like to add before I jump into the individual stories: I don’t know what it is with Joe Hill or his dad but my goodness, each story of the first half of the collection has a jab at a disgusting fat person. What is the obsession?
Best New Horror - A story about a story. Both scary and unsettling. Good opening.
20th Century Ghost - A story about the love of cinema and nostalgia as much as it is a ghost story. Excellent.
Pop Art - Super unique tale of an inflatable best friend. Great from start to finish.
You Will Hear the Locust Sing - Like a Rated R Goosebumps story
Abraham’s Boys - The next Van Helsing generation. Not a great story, but good take and twist at the end.
Better Than Home - Fatherly love and baseball. No horror or suspense.
The Black Phone - It blows my mind that a 20 page story can get expanded into two films. Mediocre compared to some of the others, but probably the most adaptable, I guess.
In the Rundown - Feels incomplete but the ending was pretty crazy.
The Cape - Probably my least favorite of the bunch. Kid has a homemade cape that helps him fly, doesn’t understand.
Last Breath - One of the shortest stories but one of the best. It didn’t need to carry on for 100 pages. Self-aware with a crazy ending.
Dead-Wood - short poem about tree ghosts
The Widow’s Breakfast - Not really sure what to think about this one. Kinda rambled on.
Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead - A man and woman are nostalgic for one another on the set of Dawn of the Dead
My Father’s Mask - One of the craziest things I’ve ever read. This story creeped me the hell out. Would love to get a short sequel or full story expansion.
Voluntary Committal - Very good concept and well done. Didn’t love the beginning or ending but the middle was very good.
Scheherazade’s Typewriter - very short story jammed into the acknowledgements. Very similar to something his dad would have written.
I quite enjoyed reading this. It was a little slow to start and a bit confusing until a few chapters in and then really took off. One thing I love about this type of story is that the message is in the forefront moreso than the actual writing itself. It has no need to be overly wordy or descriptive and still manages to nail all the key points. Taichi Yamada hits the reader directly over the head with a man whose parents have died and the joy and anguish of having to deal with grieving all over again.
I didn’t love the last couple chapters, but I do think that the ending sort of leaves to interpretation whether or not he could have still gone to see his parents had he not (insert spoiler here).
Started off great and went bad past the first act. If it had kept the momentum, it could've easily been a 4 star book.
Obviously, this book has been out for some years and been adapted several times, so I won't bore anyone with details you already know. I mainly wanted to touch on two points:
1) As good as the story was, I could have been longer. Details were iffy at times. The movies try to expand the back story a bit, but not always effectively. Can't blame them for trying. I liked the ending, but I'm not entirely sure that the novel really gave the reader enough of a reason why everything turned out the way it did.
2) No one I've seen really talks about this, but this book is freakin' hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times.
This book was so much fun! When I first saw Trevor's name pop up in my recommendations I was immediately sold.
When it comes to nostalgia, Scarewaves hit all the right notes for me. Although this book was written for kids, it's prime 90s teen horror. For fans of Goosebumps, Fear Street, Ernest Scared Stupid, and Are You Afraid of the Dark?
I had so much fun reading this. It's kind of hard to review because there were some head-scratchingly confusing things that happened but also some truly creepy things too. I guess it's sort of somewhere between B Horror and early 2000s PG-13 horror.
Anyway, this could've been a single-session type read. It's short and mostly to the point.
And, to be extremely honest, finding out that Malerman released a sequel after I had already finished kind of ruined the ending for me. Not that that spoils anything, just that I felt like this should have been a single book.
Lmao like half of this book is 5 stars but half of this book is 1 star. You “I was paid to write an honest review” folks need to start writing honest reviews.
There are some interesting ideas, sure. But let’s be honest here. What makes this a 5 star book? Is it original? No. Is it written exceptionally well? No. Are plot points followed completely? No. Are metaphors clear and explicit? No.
First and foremost: is the overall point of this book original in any way? Not in the slightest.
I’m just gonna skip the nitpicking and go straight into the meat. People are bad? Let’s corrupt a child because that’s how humans are. Oh wait, let’s go deeper…and then just…not? The whole book is a misogynistic exploration into wives and Malerman doesn’t even have the cojones to bring up the “b*tch wife’s” cheating when she’s “being honest”? Come on, bro…
A good 80% of the characters were antitheses of Chekov’s guns and most everything ended up going nowhere. Without spoiling, the ending was completely botched. Just like Tik Tok political discourse, I’m getting super jaded on reading reviews on here.
TL;dr turns out Josh Malerman just isn’t a very good writer
Like Sideways Stories from Wayside School meets Lovecraft, we're given short vignettes regarding horrors involving an apartment building with a life of its own. I rather enjoyed Pauley's style and storytelling, but I felt the overall collection underwhelming. Each story on its own was a lot of fun, but the way they were tied into one another was a little weak in my opinion. Also, with only three stories, and only one that had much of a plot, the book seemed lacking. I could've easily given this 4 or even 5 stars if there was more here. Maybe we'll get a Tower 2 and 3 or beyond and even a collection. I'd be beyond excited for that. I'd definitely recommend reading this for fun, but don't expect much more than a quick tease of what could (and should!) be part of a much larger collection.
Edit: after reading another of his collections, I'm giving this one 5 stars
This is my second trip to the twisted mind of William Pauley III and it won't be my last. This particular collection was a bit hit and miss, but the highs are always high. It's hard to put into words his style but he'll always keep the reader on their toes. I don't want to spoil anything but I especially loved the Spin Doctors story. What a wild ride; what goddamn electric nights.
William Pauley III is one of the most unique writers I have ever come across. His stories aren't to be read; they are to be experienced.
The Brothers Crunk is no exception. Written like a really weird episode of Ren & Stimpy (eg Space Madness) meets the Heavy Metal movie, this novella is chock full of surreal landscapes, gallows humor, blood & guts, and everything else that's fun.
On a side note, please check out the audiobook versions of WPIII's stories to get the full experience. Pauley is a great writer, and Connor Brannigan is an all-time great reader. I can't stress enough how much magic happens when these two collaborate.
I love Shirley Jackson's writing. The reader never quite knows what the expect. My only criticism is that the ending is a bit quick and not super climactic, but with all of her stories it's more about the journey than the destination.
I loved this book. It was both eerie and tense without relying on cheap scares or amplified violence. It was kind of slow-paced and the ending was a tad anticlimactic, but I couldn't put it down. Creepy twins, grief, parenthood, family dynamics, and supernatural beliefs are front and center. Would love to read more from this author.
Michael Crichton is the smartest guy in the room and he knows it. In fact, he'll tell you he's the smartest one in the room. Several times. Whereas someone like Dan Brown is of (maybe?) above average intelligence pretending to be a genius, Crichton truly was one. Keep that in mind when reading his books.
This book was kind of a mess, honestly. It starts off with a fairly intriguing hook, starts to get interesting, and then kind of hits a wall. From that wall, the novel sort of devolves into nonsense. I gotta say, though, Crichton really tied up nearly every single plot point and loose end except the ones pointed out by the protagonist. That was a welcome change.
Part sci-fi, part gov't thriller, this book was a roller coaster to say the least. Each chapter I would rate differently but all things considered I'd say maybe a 3-3.25 is fair.
I feel a bit misled by the premise of this one. I've heard of an unreliable narrator, but never an unreliable synopsis. While it's heavily implied that there's some huge locked-room history afoot, it's more of a town-with-a-dirty-secret story. And that's fine. It just wasn't what I expected.
There were things about the story I enjoyed. The characters were mostly pretty well thought out. The twist involving Nell was great. I can't get into details without spoiler tagging this, so I won't. The other twists I didn't love. And while it made me laugh, it was pretty weird that every death was set up like “Oh no, we found a body!” “My goodness, I do say” almost to parody status. Rachel was one of the weakest characters in my opinion, too.
My verdict is a solid 2.5 out of 5 rounded up. Which brings me to the next mystery...
How is this book carrying such a mediocre rating but all of the top comments are 4 and 5 stars? A little delving into the situtation and I, not quite Rachel Savernake, have found something interesting. All of the top comments are by people who received advanced copies. My goodness, I do say! I've heard of this, but this is one of the first time I've actually seen this happen on GR. Guess I'll try to stay away from the viral BookTok-y stuff for my own sanity's sake.
What an absolute mess of a book. Crichton is usually on point about accounting for and explaining every plausible scenario to a fault, but he did himself no favors. Events that should've taken chapters to draw out happened in paragraphs. Unnecessary scientific commentary interrupted plot. I know people will watch a crappy movie and say “oh, the book was better,” but at least the movie was b-movie funny.
I love Matt Ruff's style and the beginning was super compelling but the ending was a total clusterfuck to be completely honest. I was torn between giving this is 3 or 4, so for the sake of being nice I'll round up. Super quick read if you're looking to burn through something on a weekend.
This book was written as an alternate timeline to King's other book [b:Desperation 10584 Desperation Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1395764566l/10584.SY75.jpg 14015]. There are many parallels in characters and locations between the two. However, they are different stories and the characters have different lives. One person might be a good guy in one book and a bad guy in another.This is a cool concept, right? I like the idea that King was able to take an outline and diverge from that with two universes in which the arc happens and the way things turn out. Now, I had read Desperation several years ago and have been looking at this one on my shelf for just as long. I don't perfectly remember everything from the other, but I do believe I liked this one a bit more. They are both pretty solid 3/5 reads, I'd say.So, now that we've gotten that out of the way, and this doesn't affect my rating: Man, the more one reads SK the more the reader realizes that he really just doesn't have many original ideas. Sometimes he does and those stories take us places we've never been before. Other times, I feel like I could have just re-read a different book. In this case, I read [b:The Outsider 36124936 The Outsider Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1524596540l/36124936.SY75.jpg 57566471] not too long ago. It feels, in hindsight, that that book was more a Desperation/Regulators spinoff than a Hodges/Holly spinoff. I hate to be negative about this, but how many “evil supernatural entity comes to ruin a small town” novels can this guy write? So, really, I won't blame this one for being super unoriginal because it was published back in 1996, but it did lower the level of enjoyment for me. Please, sir, between you and your son Joe, I think we can be done with this trope.
This short story was very ironic. A little...too ironic?
No, but seriously nice Twilight Zone-esque tale here. Just enough amount of humor and pain. The epilogue was icing on the cake.
It took me a long time to read this. The premise is interesting and the characters are great, but it's just so bloated. I feel like 2/3 of the book could be cut out and it would be the same story. Big Jim Rennie is an all-time SK villain. Ending is silly. Blah blah, I won't go on...