Paint it Black Square: The cover is black except for the embroidery shears.

Trigger Warning: Cutting, or self-harm, drives the whole plot.

Iseult lives with her father in London and has been in mourning her entire life. Her father keeps her dressed in black to remember her mother. The mother Iseult shouldn't know because Iseult's mother died as Iseult was being born.

But Iseult does know her mother. Her mother is inside of her, a constant, suffocating presence. Iseult can't help talking to her, or trying to make others understand, so she has never had close friends or anybody to talk to except her father's housekeeper.

Iseult knows of only one way to silence her mother, however temporarily, and that is to wound herself, either in her scarred shoulder (from a broken collarbone at birth) or any other convenient place.

The book is fairly disgusting on that point. The reader understands that Iseult has no other recourse, but the amount of blood and the description of her injuries turns this book into body horror as opposed to the gothic ghost story with a twist that's advertised. This is supposed to be some kind of commentary on Our Current Cultural Moment, but I didn't see it. Maybe you will.

I got to the end because I felt obligated to, under normal circumstances I would have stopped when Iseult starts plunging scissors into her shoulder and snipping.

Serial/Spree Killer Square: Bridie Devine, in looking for an abducted child uncovers a world of medical curiosities, myths come to life, and a lot of dead bodies.

This was a fun book to read but, for me, a slow starter. The rich writing kept me going. Bridie Devine is an independent woman in the Victorian era, denied a license to practice medicine, she freelances odd investigations for a friend in Scotland Yard and does her own investigations on the side as well. Her last case ended badly, a child she was meant to recover died, and in that mood she approaches a new case where a mysterious child has been stolen from a remote country estate.

It doesn't help that in the course of investigating a lead she finds herself stuck with the ghost of a recently deceased boxer, domestic assistance from a seven-foot housemaid, and is possibly seeing things due to the odd tobacco blends she's consuming.

'Things in Jars' is set in the 19th century in Bridie Devie's present and in her childhood. The writing is beautiful, which combined with the unusual elements of this world, reminded me of 'The Essex Serpent'. If you loved that book you will enjoy this one. If you thought it was a bit indulgent...well, steer clear maybe.

Audience: Adult

Format: Audiobook/Owned

"No house is born bad."

- first sentence

I listened to this book for Halloween Bingo at the end of September. I've been swamped with school, work, and trying to get settled in my new house so I haven't had time to write any reviews.

I enjoyed this book. It was a slow build and I kept thinking something was going to happen, but the story kept taking unexpected turns. After all this time, that's all I have. *shrugs*

Josh Malerman knows where our fear lives. 

It's not in the gushing splatter of arterial blood or in staring into the eyes of a predator ready to pounce or in fighting for your life with something monstrous. These spike our adrenalin, call on us to fight or flee and then they are gone.

Real fear, the kind that eats at you with the slow relentlessness of rust, comes from living with a threat you cannot fight or run away from. Real fear, the kind that hunkers down in your mind and stays there, comes from being vulnerable and helpless for long periods of time, from knowing the threat is there but not when it will strike, from understanding that surviving the last hour doesn't lessen the threat of the next.

In "Bird Box" Josh Mallerman has created the perfect situation for extended exposure to deep, corrosive fear. He creates a world were seeing something, no one knows what, will make you kill others and then yourself. Where sight, the sense we all depend on most, becomes a threat, not a defence. Where anyone, including you, can become an enemy in an instant. Then he locks a group of people house that at first seems like a haven but slowly becomes a cage, and lets the fear fester and the tension build until threat is a constant unwelcome companion.

Early in the book, there's a scene with one of the men from the house fetching water from the well. He's blindfold but he's done this many times before. He's has a rope around his waist, held by a housemate. There are sticks to mark his path. He tells himself that if he follows the routine, he'll be safe. Then he thinks he hears... what? who? how close?

Malerman turns that walk to the well into a scene more heart-thumping than a face-to-face confrontation with the nightmare creature of your choice.

This goes straight for where our fears live. 

I won't reveal the plot but I will say that I stayed up late to finish "Bird Box" because I couldn't go to sleep without knowing how the book ended.

If you haven't read it already, I recommend it to you. It's as close to perfect as a horror book can get. The tension is almost unbearable. The fear is visceral. The people are real. The events, well they're a perfect mix of heartbreak and hope.