lauriereadslohf's reviews
1518 reviews

 This was so sweet and not in a make you puke so sickly sweet sort of way. Review a little later - if I can find a working brain cell.

Probably a 4 - 4 1/2 because they did have a little trouble with sharing their feelin's and communicating but they're men so there's that, lol. 

 

If bugs creep you out, do I ever have the book for you! You’re going to LOVE it. You can trust me, haha 😈

Casey is an environmentally conscious park manager working with a scientist to safely reduce the mosquito population without harmful pesticides in-between caring for the swamp and cleaning up after thoughtless visitors.

Things go awry pretty quickly! And by awry, I mean the bugs are mutating and some are growing disturbingly large proboscis(ses?) and they are super aggressive and ravenous. Things get gross rather quickly and it’s a beautiful thing to witness.

Well, I thought so anyway!

Since this is a novella of 97 pages I’m not going to say too much so you can go in and discover all of the gory body horror goodness for yourself! 

I enjoyed this book so very much. The heroine is a strong protagonist with a good heart and a bit of a painful past and I really enjoyed reading it.

 

A man attempts to prove his innocence to his son in a series of letters. But he’s extremely unreliable.

 

I’m gonna go ahead and give this book all five stars because I loved everything about it. I will not be taking questions. I hate what I hate and I love what I love 😈

Deanna hasn’t left her apartment in a few years because she doesn’t trust herself to keep her murderous tendencies in check. Why bother mixing with the public when one can easily have everything delivered to your door, anyway? Sounds like a good plan to me. She works from home as a cam girl and makes a killing doing it. She fakes most of it but she’s making people happy and she’s rolling in the cash. A win/win.

“They want to believe that I am normal.”

I loved this book. I think I already said that but this is why: Deanna tells the story from her POV and she is a compelling storyteller. Her backstory which is revealed slowly makes it all make sense. Deanna knows who she is - or thinks she does, and she’s doing the general public a service by keeping to herself. She’s interesting and she’s not afraid to admit who she is deep, down inside.

She says this at one point, “I like the sound of screams. Real screams.” and all I can say is that when a woman tells you something like that about herself you should probably listen up, haha. But, OF COURSE, there is a man, a delivery man, who declares himself in love with Deanna and tries to weasel his way into her life and sticks his snout where it doesn’t belong. And then there’s another man who may or may not be a real menace to society and all of these come together to create a thrilling book that I absolutely adored.

“No one is normal. Everyone is just pretending to be normal.”

 

 

The Prisoners of Stewartville is a beautifully written novella about a town buried beneath a cloud of despair and desperation. Getting out alive and healthy doesn’t really happen in Stewartville. You either work in the prison, have an incarcerated relative or become an inmate yourself. But our young narrator Casey hopes to get out of the stifling grasp of its looming presence someday. 

The book begins when our young narrator and his friend Denny, who is very new to this awful town, discover a big black hole in Denny’s basement when his mom tosses her steel-toed workboot at Denny’s head but misses and knocks some bricks loose instead. What’s a boy to do but investigate this possible portal to hell?!  But Casey has lived here his entire life and he knows with every bone in his body that nothing good can come out of crawling into that hole and he Hell Noes himself right out of that basement because he’s unwilling to tempt fate and discover something so terrible that it had to be bricked up! Soon after everything gets even shittier and creepier.

This novella set me up for a spooky boyhood adventure and some of the dialogue was hilariously delightful but what actually occurs is much more insidious and painfully emotional than I ever imagined and to say much else will ruin it so I won’t be the jerk who does that today. 

There’s a lot going on in this town and none of it is good. It’s a bleak and brutal read about a town infested with poverty, hopelessness, and despair. You’ll care about the narrator, you’ll hope he’s able to overcome everything thrown at him and you’ll probably want to crawl into a big ball of sad quite a few times as the story unfolds and everything he’s really dealing with here is revealed.

This well thought out and excellently written debut is one that I can easily recommend to dark fiction fans. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ stars.

 

 Cockblock by C.V. Hunt is one of my favorite books. It’s a madcap adventurous tale about a very strange apocalypse with a brutally perfect ending and I highly recommend it. Murder House, the author’s latest book, is filled with rage and despair, and frustration but it didn’t quite come together for me in the end and some of that frustration ended up being mine.

Laura and her boyfriend of forever move into a murder house so he can write a true-crime novel. The rent is free for a few months and they appear to have nothing much else going on, so why not, right?

But it’s a bad idea (oh, really now?!) A truly terrible idea, actually. But not for the reasons most might think. Brent and Laura have some major relationship issues, Laura can’t afford her mental health medication and is struggling and they absolutely should not live together in any house never mind one where the floors still seem to be stained in blood.

What follows is a slow unraveling of reality. It’s painful to witness. I screamed at the book for both of these people to get the hell away from each other. Did they listen? OF COURSE NOT! They never do.

Some of the imagery here is bone-chilling, the descriptions of the decaying murder house were nightmare-inducing and beautifully written. I needed to know exactly what the heck was going on and this kept me going even when I was a bit exhausted by Brent and Laura’s hate-filled relationship dynamic and their toxic behavior.

There were some threads here that didn’t completely come together for me in the end but there were enough well-written unpredictable scenes filled with despair and desperation and wtf-ery to keep my attention until the final page.

The Return reads like a friendship drama with dark undertones and it kept me hooked with its secrets and creepiness even when the chit-chat began to grate a bit on my last nerve. But I have zero patience lately so don’t take that as harshly as it probably sounds.

This story is about four college friends. One of them goes missing and returns two years later but she’s a wee bit different now and has no memory of those lost years. In order to reconnect they decide to spend some time away at a weirdly decorated Inn with a ridiculously unfriendly staff. Julie, the friend who went missing, shows up but she looks bad, not at all like the Julie they were expecting.

“She looks better today. Her skin more like skin and less like whatever it looked like yesterday. Pudding with a film on top.” 😳

This is a hard one to rate so I’ll likely end up going with a three. It kept me engaged and needing to know all of its secrets and the atmosphere was done very well but these women had a strange aversion to asking Julie the questions that mattered, the burning ones that they’re all thinking about, they were so polite and it drove me a little nutty. What kind of friends are these?! Why aren’t these women nosier?! That’s what I kept wondering but perhaps I’m simply too nosey by nature.

Anyhow, the book is chilling when it wants to be and there’s some nicely described body horror here but I thought it wasted too much time with some of the dramas featuring these ladies, some of which weren’t really the glue that held the plot together, if you get what I’m saying. I loved that these characters were imperfect and petty and had some jealousy issues going on within their circle but some of the past deeds went on for too long for my liking. I wanted more of the current day strangeness. There were also some things set up here that didn’t seem to quite gel together in the end for me. So, a three it is! That means I liked it and I think it’s worth a read if you like a slow burning creepfest. 

Food Fright takes the hazing gone all kinds of wrong trope and makes it fresh and disgusting and fun. It’s equal parts ick!, absurd and inventive. It would make a truly wild film that I’d watch over and over again 😹

Cassie just wanted to fit in and allows herself to be bullied into doing something she isn’t comfortable doing to appease the mean girls. A terrible, regrettable thing happens because OF COURSE it does silly girl and then the fun begins! This is a novella and to say too much of anything here will spoil all of the fun for you so I’m going to keep my big mouth shut and tell you to read it if you like gooey horror! This is the gooey-ist and you will love it! Pair it with Sleepaway Camp for a double feature of glorious ewww!

At its heart, and buried under all of the over the top monsters (I will neva look at a brownie the same way again) and gleeful killin’ joy, this is a book about acceptance and the missteps many make attempting to find it in the wrong place and I can easily recommend it if you have a strong stomach and a ridiculous sense of humor. 

This little book of dark poetry will entrance you with its dark magic and simmering rage. Within its pages you will find fairytale worlds filled with magic, wonder and furious brutality. If you like dark fiction, I recommend giving it a try. The poems are broken up into themed chapters that often progress from one to the next continuing in a story-like fashion. 

The first section was about bloodlust, destruction and war and I’m not entirely certain my brain comprehended it all on the first go but the poems all pulled me in and created a complete story.

I mean:

“His eyelids cut in a half-moon
To ensure he witnesses every moment 
Leading to his death”

What is there not to love about that?!

The Fairy Tales section was one of my favorites. They’re beautifully modern but yet manage to maintain a fairytale-like mood filled with the whims of the fey, the evils of men and they are bloody and vicious as well they should be!

All the Monsters in the World brings forth devastating violation, murder, and even a quirky vampire poem that offered some sweet, much needed relief from all the unrelenting but purifying violence.

“They will arrive
With their guns and scythes,
Here we will wait 
And eat them alive.”

Hahahaha! Dare I say how much I love the way Sng puts words together?!

There’s one poem here that will sit with me forever. It’s called “The Girl and Her Wolf Dog” and It broke me into a million pieces and put me back together again. If I had to pick just one perfect poem from this collection, a collection filled with them, it would be this one.

Do something nice for you and give it a read! I doubt you’ll have regrets.

 

I loved The Twisted Ones by this author. It was such a pleasure to read so I had high expectations for this one and I was not disappointed! My friend Jen told me The Hollow Places was based on The Willows by Algernon Blackwood and this was exciting because I have actually read and reviewed that short story! This is good news for me because it means another smartypants know-it-all stranger won’t be able to come here and school me on the history of everything ever written in the horror field this time around. Note to everyone else: YOU CAN FULLY ENJOY THIS BOOK WITHOUT HAVING READ THE WILLOWS and it’s perfectly okay if you haven’t. Kingfisher takes some of the elements from The Willows and runs wild with them. Here’s my review of The Willows if you haven’t read it and want to learn a little about it:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1800516219?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Kara is newly divorced and better off for it if you ask me and I’m sure you just did. Her husband was quite a toad.

“He hasn’t given a shit about my interests for years. He doesn’t even know the name I write fanfic under. Not that I want him to.” Hahahaha, I love the way Kingfisher writes.

Kara is pondering moving back in with her mother with great dread. She and mom do not get along so when her Uncle Earl kindly offers her a room if she catalogs his Wonder Museum, a store of oddities, she jumps at the chance. I mean, who wouldn’t want to spend their days cataloging old taxidermy pieces and bizarre finds from all over the world? I want that job. I might even do that job for free. She settles in and feels right at home in the store, where she actually grew up and named a stuffed beast or two that still hangs on the wall, and gets to work. It isn’t long before she discovers a strange hole in the drywall. But what she finds upon closer inspection isn’t drywall and studs but a walled up hallway.  😳  That can’t be good! She enlists the help of Simon, the guy who runs the coffee shop next door, and who dresses better than most anyone I’ll ever know. Together they get down to investigating and adventuring and running for their lives! There is no funny business going on between them and I loved to see it. They both have a quirky sense of humor and their dynamic is a joy and really makes the book something special. The dialogue is light-hearted and a dream to read:

“We’re not in a horror movie Simon. 

How do you know? 

Because one of us would have to be spunky and virginal.”

I love these two weirdos so much.

Anyhow, what they find has to be read to be believed. It’s wild, weird, and exceptionally creepy and I’m not going to spoil you but you will likely be giving willows the side-eye for the rest of your days. The imagery is vividly disturbing and the premise pretty darn creepy.

I knew I was going to adore this book the moment Kara started talking about her strained relationship with her mother in such a comical and realistic way and I was not let down or left disappointed at any point. I loved every moment of this often horrifying wild ride and I highly recommend it if you enjoy a little humor with your horror. If you’re a snob who doesn’t like these things, you’ve been warned and I can’t help ya. I’ll be over here loving what I love and this is one of the things I will love and cherish always.