The September House

 The September House by Carissa Orlando                              Horror/Thriller/Paranormal/Mystery

(from Goodreads)  A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.  When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.  Margaret is not most people.  Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.

(My Review)  Hal and Margaret move into their dream house for their retirement, but things are not as they seem.  They soon learn the house is haunted, especially in the month of September.  Their daughter, Katherine, comes to visit (in September) to find her father missing.  As she tries to figure out where is he is, she tries to unravel the mystery of the house.  Is the house haunted, or is her mother suffering from a mental illness?  I found this book interesting.  It was part spooky, part Haunted Mansion, part family drama.  I would definitely recommend it.

Starling House

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow                            Fantasy/Horror/Gothic/Fiction

(from Goodreads) Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.  Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.  As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares. If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.

 (My Review)

This was so atmospheric.  If you want dark academia, this is the book for you.  Opal goes to work in the haunted mansion of the author of her favorite book, which is now inhabited by Arthur Starling.  Together, they fight supernatural forces threatening the house.  I really enjoyed the relationship between Opal and Author - it gave me Beauty and the Beast vibes.  It also kinda reminded me of Ninth House.  

Shark Heart: A Love Story

 Shark Heart:  A Love Story by Emily Habeck                Literary Fiction/Magical Realism/Fantasy

(from Goodreads)  Newlyweds face the unimaginable in this epic tale about marriage, motherhood, and enduring love.  For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will gradually turn into a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams.  At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with a college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds. Woven throughout this bold novel is the story of Wren’s mother, Angela, who becomes pregnant with Wren at fifteen in an abusive relationship amidst her parents’ crumbling marriage. In the present, all of Wren’s grief eventually collides, and she is forced to make an impossible choice.  A sweeping love story that is at once lyrical and funny, airy and visceral, Shark Heart is an unforgettable, gorgeous novel about life’s perennial questions, the fragility of memories, finding joy amidst grief, and creating a meaningful life. This daring debut marks the arrival of a wildly talented new writer abounding with originality, humor, and heart.

(My Review)

I've never read a book like this before.  Falling in love and getting married is hard enough, but what if you find out that he is going to turn into a great white shark?  This is a beautiful story of the dramatic journey this couple takes during their first year of marriage.

In the Lives of Puppets

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune                                      Fantasy/SciFi/Fiction/LGBTQ+

(from Goodreads)  In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees live three robots – fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.  The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled ‘HAP’, he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio – a past spent hunting humans.  When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.  Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for can he accept love with strings attached?

(My Review)

This book was so delightful!  Vic, a human, lives with in a family of robots, including an inventor who collects broken robots.  Vic secretly repairs an android, Hap, and to learn more of his past (or to escape from it) they set off on an adventure.  This was a beautiful little retelling of Pinocchio, with hints of Frankenstein and Wall-E.  The characters was so lovely, and at times I found myself laughing out loud.  I loved the found-family aspect of this story. This was by the same author as The House in the Cerulean Sea which I also recommend.

The Invited

 The Invited by Jennifer McMahon                                       Ghost Mystery/Suspense

(from Amazon)  In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate have abandoned the comforts of suburbia to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this beautiful property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the local legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago. With her passion for artifacts, Helen finds special materials to incorporate into the house--a beam from an old schoolroom, bricks from a mill, a mantel from a farmhouse--objects that draw her deeper into the story of Hattie and her descendants, three generations of Breckenridge women, each of whom died suspiciously. As the building project progresses, the house will become a place of menace and unfinished business: a new home, now haunted, that beckons its owners and their neighbors toward unimaginable danger.

(My Review)

This was a seriously spooky book. It was a great story, but it dragged a bit, but it was really worth it at the end.

Holly

Holly by Stephen King                                        Psychological Thriller/Horror

(from Amazon)  Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Audiences have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.  When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.  Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.  Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.

(My Review)  

First of all, I did not know this was a part of a series - although I did read "The Outsider" (they had completely different feels).  However, it did not affect my reading of this book.  I loved this!  This was probably one of the best Stephen King I have ever read, and I definitely want to go back and read the other Holly Gibney book.  I felt it was a bit different from other King books I've read, in that it was more thriller and less supernatural (even from the first Holly Gibney book).  It was a solid thriller, and even though you know who the evil-doers are, the suspense is held all the way to end.

You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight

 You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron                          YA Horror

(from Amazon)  Charity has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, The Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business.    But the last weekend of the season, Charity’s co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity’s role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they’ll need figure out what this killer is after. As they unravel the bloody history of the real Mirror Lake, Charity discovers that there may be more to the story than she ever suspected . . .

(My Review)  This was a fun, campy but scary read.  It had many of the classic horror movie/book themes (teens at a summer camp), that kept me reading.