Synopsis (from Goodreads):

England, 1882. In Victorian London, two children with mysterious powers are hunted by a figure of darkness —a man made of smoke.

Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a lifetime of brutality, doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety, they are forced to confront the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous.

What follows is a journey from the gaslit streets of London, to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh, where other children with gifts—the Talents—have been gathered. Here, the world of the dead and the world of the living threaten to collide. And as secrets within the Institute unfurl, Marlowe, Charlie and the rest of the Talents will discover the truth about their abilities, and the nature of the force that is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.

With lush prose, mesmerizing world-building, and a gripping plot, Ordinary Monsters presents a catastophic vision of the Victorian world—and of the gifted, broken children who must save it.

Review:

I didn't know what to expect when I started reading Ordinary Monsters, by J.M. Miro, but I liked the blurb and was lucky enough to receive an advance copy from NetGalley.  This book was a cross between Miss Peregrin's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Rigs, and a Stephen King novel: Fantasy with a hefty helping of Horror.  The story follows several children who have supernatural "Talents" as they being sought by two groups of people.  Those who want to protect them, and those who want to use them for evil.  But who will reach them first?  The children in the story are pawns in a much larger game of chess.  Both sets of adults looking for them want to use them in some fashion or another.  They can sense this, and it's difficult to know who the children can trust. 

I really liked all the characters in this story, both adults and children.  All the characters are fully realized and one can really sympathize with nearly all of them.  Charlie, a African-American teen has been brutalized all his life.  He has no reason to trust anyone.  But he quickly sees a kindred spirit in Marlowe.  Although Marlow is much younger than Charlie, he has also seen many hard times.  He no sooner finds a stable home than he is ripped away from it.  Both have powers they don't understand. 

The adults in the story, especially the two detectives, Coulton and Alice, were also wonderful characters.  Each had a compelling backstory that added motivation to what they were doing.  I loved how protective they became as they got to know the children.  Even the villain, who of course never considered himself to be evil, had a long and interesting history.

The world-building is also top-notch.  The world is mostly set in Victorian London.  It's grimy, smoggy, and filled with desperate people.  Everyone is one step away from destitution.  Get hurt on the job?  You become homeless.  Kids who are orphaned must fend for themselves.  But it's the shadow world that some of the characters must enter that mirrors London that is even more terrible.  It's filled with dread, and horrible creatures.

My only complaint about this book is that it is SUPER LONG!  At nearly 700 pages, this book is an epic.  And it's part of a series!  If you are in the mood for a long, but compelling, read, this book ticks all the boxes.  Fun characters, creepy bad guys, magical school, vast conspiracies and very gothic horror await.  This book will keep you enthralled (and probably also give you nightmares).

Trigger Warning for Child Abuse

Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release Date:  June 7th, 2022

Author:  J.M. Miro

Publisher:  Flatiron Books

Genre:  Historical Horror/Fantasy

Page Length:  672 Pages

Source: NetGalley

Format:  E-Book

Recommendation:  If you like dark fantasy mixed with horror, this book is for you. The world-building and characters will leave a definite impression.  This is the beginning of a series that will be a must read for me.

Please Note:  I received an advance audio copy of this novel from Libro.fm, in exchange for an audio review.  This did not influence the opinions in my review in any way.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

A highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.

Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.

Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.

A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagin:ation of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read. 

Review:

Plain Bad Heroines is a story with dual timelines. One story takes place in the early nineteen hundreds at a girls boarding school in New England, while the other is set in modern-day Hollywood.  With it's story within a story format, the book is a look at female romantic relationships in both times.  It's also a fun behind the scenes look at the making of a big budget movie, with all the power plays, and shenanigans that go along with it.  I enjoyed both stories, and found this to be a highly entertaining audiobook.

What I Liked:

Narration:

I was very impressed with the narration by Xe Sands.  She perfectly created both the cadence of New England society women and the cockiness of Hollywood players.  I particularly liked how she conveyed the longing between Libbie and Alex.  At a time when lesbians could go to jail for showing their affections for other women, Sand's voice got across all the secrecy, and fear, of these characters.

Story Within a Story:

There were two parallel stories in this book.  The story of two female lovers who are running an all girls school in Rhode Island in the early nineteen hundreds, and a modern story about the making of a film based on the girls school.  This was a fun behind the scenes look at the making of a movie, that contrasts with (and sometimes mirrors) the evolution of the female relationships at the girls school.

Characters:

My favorite character was Harper Harper, the modern-day movie star who will be the centerpiece of the movie about Brookhanst.  The tough, lesbian actress who always knew how to turn on her movie star charm, also was a young woman who knew how strange it was that she was famous at all.  I could totally see Kristen Stewart in this role.  

I also liked Audrey, the child star who desperately wants to be taken seriously as an adult actress.  The run up of her audition for the role of Clara was a riveting behind the scenes look at the movie business.  Her mother, a faded movie star in her own right, was a cringe-worthy look at a woman who ruthlessly used her daughter to gain attention for herself.

What I Was Mixed About:

Ending:

I have mixed feelings about the endings of the two stories.  I enjoyed the resolution of the contemporary story, but the one that took place in the early nineteen hundreds was unclear to me.   The modern story, which was the making of a movie based on the girls school in the earlier story, showed the completion of the movie, as well as what happened to the characters.  I was deeply invested in these characters and so it was very satisfying to have a follow up on the characters after the movie was finished.  The earlier story involving the love story between Libbie (the owner of the Bookhanst girls school) and Alex (her female lover), has a muddled ending.  Even though I could understand what happened, I had a hard time understanding WHY it happened.  The author went for a gothic horror ending, but it was tempered by the fact that it was so convoluted, the explanation of what happened wound up more confusing than revelatory.

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Rating:  

Release Date:  October 20th, 2020

Author: Emily M. Danforth

Audio Narrator: Xe Sands

Audio Publisher:  Harper Audio

Audio Length:  19 Hours, 27 Minutes

Print Publisher:  William Morrow

Print Page Length:  619 Pages

Source:  Libro.fm

Format:  Audiobook

Recommendation:  Even with it's confusing ending, this was a very compelling and entertaining book. 

Please Note:  I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  This did not influence the opinions in my review in any way.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Beatrix Greene has made a name for herself in Victorian England as a reputable spiritual medium, but she’s a fraud: even she knows ghosts aren’t real. But when she’s offered a lucrative job by James Walker—a scientist notorious for discrediting pretenders like her—Beatrix takes the risk of a lifetime. If her séance at the infamously haunted Ashbury Manor fools him, she will finally have true financial freedom. If she fails, her secret will become her public shame.

But James has his own dark secrets, and he believes only a true medium can put them to rest. When Beatrix’s séance awakens her real gift—and with it, a vengeful spirit—James finds that the answers he seeks are more dangerous than he could have imagined. Together, with a group of supernatural sleuths, Beatrix and James race to settle the ghost’s unrest before it strikes— or else they might not make it out of the haunted manor alive.

New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins, along with Ash Parsons and Vicky Alvear Shecter, weaves darkness, death, and a hint of desire into this suspenseful mystery for fans of Sherlock Holmes and Crimson Peak.

Review:

Autumn is that time of year where a good, spooky story is welcome.  The Haunting of Beatrix Greene, by Rachel Hawkins, Ash Parsons, and Vicky Alvear Shecter, has a lot of fun horror elements:  ghosts, murder, and a mystery.   Even though I expected these things, the story got sidetracked by plot holes, and an improbable romance.  This was a fun horror story, but it could have been even better without the cheesy melodrama.

What I Liked:

Premise:

Women in Victorian England don't have many options to make a living, so Beatrix Greene makes the most of her theatrical background to work as a Medium.  But she knows she's a fraud.  When a wealthy skeptic offers her and her friend a large sum of money to conduct a seance, she can hardly say no.  She is all set to fake it, but then she makes contact with REAL spirits!  I loved this premise so much.  It gave the reader a sense of how difficult life was for women, but also turned the tables on the "Medium".  This was really fun.

Mystery:

The seance sets the stage for the central mystery of the book:  why did James's mother kill his brother, and then kill herself?  Why would she do it?  It became an infamous murder in the universe of the novel.  And why was his father so violent?  The house seems to be, itself, a character.  All is revealed when the seance begins and Beatrix becomes possessed by the spirit of James's mother.

Characters:

Besides Beatrix, who is a strong, independent woman (especially for Victorian England), there are several wonderful supporting characters, such as Amanda (an American photographer), and Harry, her friend and assistant.  I thought they brought some normalcy to a strange situation.  Amanda especially represents new opportunities for women, as another female with a career.  And Harry is just a wonderfully supportive friend.

What I Was Mixed About:

Plot Holes:

At the beginning of visiting Ashbury Manor, James invites Beatrix, Harry, Amanda, and a Dr. Doyle, for the seance.  Dr. Doyle is, of course, the name of the creator of Sherlock Holmes.  As tantalizing as this is, this goes nowhere.  He literally is gone in the next scene.

There is also a friend of James, a fellow aristocrat named Stanhope, who crashes the gathering.  He later becomes important in the story, but it's never explained how he knows so much information about Ashbury Manor, and the family curse.

Romance:

The time is set in Victorian England.  Yet, Beatrix and James get very familiar, very quickly.  I know that Beatrix is supposed to be more modern and independent, but this would have been scandalous in those times.  Given the difficultly Beatrix has supporting herself, would she have risked being branded a loose woman?  Even as a Medium, no one would have wanted to associate with a wanton woman.  And I just didn't think the romance was believable.

Rating: 

Release Date:  October 28th, 2020

Authors:  Rachel Hawkins, Ash Parsons,  & Vivky Alvear Shecter

Publisher:  Serial Box

Genre:  Gothic Horror

Page Length:  198 Pages

Source:  NetGalley

Format:  E-Book

Recommendation:  While it was entertaining and fun for Halloween, I would grab it from the library. 

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes a novel set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.

After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find - her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

Review:

More and more, I have come to appreciate the Gothic Horror genre.  Just from the title, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, you know there will be an isolated mansion, a creepy family, and dark secrets.  Add to this a strong female main character and the glamour of the 1950's, and you have a highly entertaining book.

What I Liked:

Setting:

The novel begins in 1950's Mexico City.  This is a world of wealth, glamour clothes, parties, and pampered daughters.   But this is also a world where once a woman is married she is part of her husband's family.  Any independence she may have had is gone, replaced by total subservience to her husband.  

When Noemí leaves Mexico City to check on her cousin, Catalina, she encounters remote tropical jungles and a village dominated by a wealthy English family living in a strange mansion.  They represent the colonial power that dominated Mexico's past.  These are people who feel superior to the locals, and are only too willing to raid the resources of the land for their own benefit.

The village and remote mansion are full of atmospheric dread.  If there isn't a thick fog, it's unceasingly raining.  Everything smells of rot.  And there is a terrible silence, particularly in the Doyle's mansion.  Unless you count the voices of the dead...

Characters:

Noemí is a glamorous young woman who's biggest dilemma is choosing which dress to wear to the next party.  She is used to being indulged by her father, changing hobbies (and a variety of dates) constantly.  But her family is getting impatient for Noemí to settle down and get married.  She wants to hold off on this as long as possible by going to university (and not just the ladies college that proper young women attend).  So she makes a deal.  She will check on her cousin in exchange for getting her shot at a real education.  

I liked Noemí for her strong, independent nature.  She wants more than society's confining roles for women.  She also knows her own self-worth. Even faced with the racist English family of her cousin' husband (the Doyles), she never allows herself to feel inferior.  

Francis is a member of the Doyle family who is about Noemí's age.  Unlike the rest of his family, Francis does not share his family's racist views.  He wants to help Noemí understand what happened to Catalina.  But he is also completely stuck with this terrible family.  This means he can't really warn Noemí of the very real dangers she faces.  Some may feel that he is rather cowardly, but I felt a lot of sympathy with Frances.  As he was completely dependent on his family, it was nearly impossible for him to rebel without paying a steep price.

Story:

This is a twisted, creepy story!  On the one hand, it's about the overt oppression of women in Mexican society in the 1950's.  Noemí may be wealthy, but she is dependent on her family.  She doesn't have any way to make her own choices in regards to how she will live her life (strangely, Francis, the young male in the Doyle family, shares a similar fate).  She must learn to strike a balance between pleasing her father, and total rebellion.

But this is also a straight up horror story.  Is Catalina hearing ghosts or is she mentally unstable?  Why won't the Doyles let Catalina leave to seek medical help?  Is her husband Virgil overprotective, or is he holding on to her to gain access to her money?  And what is that strange mold in her room (the one pulsating on the wall)?  Noemí wants to find the answers, but there are obstacles at every turn.  

As we learn more about the Doyles there are even more mysteries.  Why did their silver mine close down?  How did all the workers die?  And how old is the patriarch of the family, anyway?  The answers are deeply disturbing.

What I Didn't Like:

Narration:

This is one of the few audiobooks where I wasn't impressed with the narration by Frankie Corzo.  The narrator's performance was delivered in an almost monotone voice.  I really wanted to hear more emotion in Noemí's voice.  There were some genuinely scary moments.  But the narrator kept the performance at the same steady tone.  I wanted more in such a creepy book.

Rating: 

Release Date:  June 30th, 2020

Author:  Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Genre:  Gothic Horror

Audiobook Publisher:  Penguin Random House Audio

Narrator:  Frankie Corzo

Audio Length:  10 hours, 39 minutes

Book Publisher: Del Rey

Book Length:  301 Pages

Source:  Bought on Libro.fm

Format:  Audiobook

Recommendation:  A creepy fun book, perfect for the fall season.