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Then Lizzie spotted it: the worn hatchet Father had left behind after he'd last brought in the newly chopped wood.
The Bride Wore Brains delivers exactly what its title and cover promise. I am easily misled but this time all ended gorily-ever-after and I couldn’t be happier.
Here’s the gist: Bridezilla wants a perfect wedding and is determined to get it no matter who she ticks off. The wedding party spends some time bantering, fighting, smoking pot and ogling each other as they do their best to stay out of the bride’s way. But things go awry when one of the groomsmen starts vomiting out his insides . . . And that’s when the real fun begins! At first most of these people think they’re being pranked but they quickly realize it’s real when their friends start turning an unappealing shade of gray.
People are eaten, secrets are revealed and a few surprising character turn-arounds happen. It was sarcastic, horrifying and a terrific black comedy that is as gory as they get.
I have to admit I was very worried there for a while because the writer spends an enormous amount of time setting the scene and fleshing out the characters, most of who were terrible people. Think frat boys and spoiled cheerleaders. I also could care less about wedding drama.
But the payoff is well worth it. You really start to despise some of these self-centered, obnoxious people and cannot wait for a few of them to get eaten. Or maybe it’s just me having these thoughts?
In the end, the biggest surprise for me was that I ended up not entirely despising a few of the characters who I completely despised in the earlier chapters. The reluctant bridesmaid was the only one I could tolerate early on and she turns out to be not only bitingly sarcastic but smart and resourceful too. Fleshy, one of the groomsmen, is a silly pervert who embraces his ridiculous reputation and inserted some comic relief exactly where it was needed and he wasn’t so bad in the end, after all. I won’t spoil the rest by blabbing on any longer but the amount of characterization is exceptional in this short story.
It’s a short book and well worth reading if you like your horror gory and your humor black. Just stick with it, I promise it gets good once the blood finally starts flowing.
Jonathan Maberry is real hit or miss for me. I like the Joe Ledger series even though I generally hate his writing style. But I still keep giving him a chance. This book won the Bram Stoker Award so I thought I was in for something good here. If this is what they honor, then I don't actually get what the BSA is about.
Once again Maberry has about fifty million characters and we have to jump to all of their POVs. It didn't feel like there was any sort of cohesive story just random vignettes that pull together separately. It was all slow as hell. There were hints at horror elements, but not enough for there to be anything called horror, really. There was more of the human crime element.
Even the people that were obviously supposed to be the good protagonists weren't in my opinion. Everyone knew this guy Vic is beating on his 14-year-old stepson but no one does anything about it because Vic is friends with cops or some such nonsense. Our "hero" Crowe calls himself doing something by befriending the kid, Mike. On this night Mike had already gotten into an accident and was injured and Crowe knew that sending him home with his stepfather was a bad, dangerous idea but did it anyway because the Mayor told him to. When he leaves the kid to do the job he was tasked with and comes back to be told by a witness that Vic came to get Mike and full on punched him in the gut before tossing him in the car, Crowe was pissed. And that was about it. We're then treated to a very extended and graphic scene of Vic beating the ever-loving shit out of Mike. It was horrific and supposed to somehow be ameliorated because Mike realizes that Vic is nothing more than human during the beating? What the?
Back to Crowe and the very next thing he's thinking about getting home to his girlfriend and the meal she cooked him. That's when I was done with this book. There are no good guys in this story if they just let something like that go on and do nothing. He didn't even bother to go check on the kid! Then he realized said girlfriend was probably in trouble and that's all that mattered. Speaking of the girlfriend, the topper on my DNF was her running back to the farm where the killer who had kidnapped her and her family was instead of trying to get any sort of help.
I don't care about these characters at all. Except Mike and since he isn't getting help I can't stand to read/listen to more. I don't care about what's coming, if anything is coming because the whole thing has been boring as hell. And long as hell. I actually groaned out loud when I was halfway through because there was still another seven hours left! I tried, but it's not worth my time. I'm super disappointed. I was hoping to have a fun creepy/scary trilogy to get me through the rest of October.
ETA: I forgot to mention that the narrator was pretty awful as well. I actually ended up getting used to him eventually, but he was in no way good.
You can tell Audible out a lot of work into producing this audiobook. There is a full cast of actors playing different voices, fully acting out their parts complete with sound effects.
All of this is really great, however, when adapting the graphic novel they did not adapt the action in the panels. So this was very much like listening to a television show. There were a ton of times where action was happening but the listener has absolutely no idea what is going on or what just happened (unless, if course, they are following along in the books or have read them before). I could follow along with the story for the most part but there were big gaps in my understanding. The people adapting the comic should have turned the action panels into exposition. Especially in this case as the authors were involved in the production.
I can't complain too much, I suppose, as I got a decent amount of entertainment from this free audiobook. Thankfully my library has these in e-comic form so I'll eventually go through them. If you're going to listen to this I'd suggest you check to see if you can get your hands on the books to read along.
I liked the story itself well enough though the resolution of one element at the end didn't make sense to me. I didn't mind that it happened—I expected it to—I just wasn't down with the way it happened. And I really disliked some of the deaths. Speaking of which,
a lot of children die in this thing, haha. Like, I count two adults out of something like 50 deaths.
P.S. If you want to try it out, it is still free and will be until November 4th. Can't beat that price, at least.
IS THIS IN FLIPPING FIRST PERSON?!?!
Why does anyone think a mystery or thriller should be in first person?! Or romance! Soon there will be nowhere to turn for non-tedious/ridiculous storytelling. Looking at some quoted lines from this book . . . really, people think like that? No, they don't. It doesn't make sense!
Why are so many of the books that sound really interesting in frigging first person now?! It's like the authors-pandering-to-adult-YA-readers is infecting everything.
I really truly want want to do harm to the people encouraging authors to abandon third for God awful first. The worst are the ones like the book I finished today. Switching from first to third and back. If you can't tell your damn first person story in one POV without switching that should be a flashing neon sign that your story needs to be in third. Which is probably why I'm so extra mad that this book that sounds so good is in first. I wasn't expecting the last one to be in first at all—totally unpleasant surprise—and then even more heinous that it was mixed third/first. That on top of constantly getting excited over a blurb or newspaper review only to find out the story is in first has lead to severe frustration. Sigh.
In a completely OT aside: Some of the "how I'm feeling about this" emojis or whatever are hilarious. They make no sense!
