Cbr18 Bingo – Season: these books were my prizes for giving to Locus Magazine during their fundraising season. And I’m posting this review during the season for horror books.
Chopping Spree by Angela Sylvaine, the cheerful goth – my expectations were very low for this mall slasher, a sub-genre I didn’t know existed. The novella follows Penny through one night as she uncovers the conspiracy and mystery of her small town and its mall, which seems to survive on 80s nostalgia in the era of online shopping. Nostalgia… and murder! I enjoyed this quick read and I’ll keep an eye out for the author’s other works. Hopefully I’ll still have fun with my expectations above ground. Hail Plutus!
The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu – Eleanor was pressured by her dying mother to buy a house and then pressured by her realtor to buy one without confirming its habitability. So she bought the kind of house that’s not supposed to get wet and lived there in an abandoned planned community with her mother’s ghost. This is as unsettling and pathetic as it sounds. I loved the scenes where stuff happened (the creepy locksmith, the awkward dinners with friends), but not enough happened for me to like the book. I didn’t dislike anything though and it made me grateful for my own housing and virtual therapy experience. So that’s a net positive.
The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson – this is the only book of the three that I would have picked for myself. The story is about Nona, a single mother of two living boys and one dead. The three live in a housing project, haunted by gun violence and ghosts. This book was 400 pages of Black people suffering and succumbing to structural racism and gun violence, and then a few extra pages for hope. If it wasn’t so good, I would have put it down because it was really bleak. But as hard as it was to read, it was harder to put down. And maybe I need a break from this “the real monster is society” type of horror (which I am weak for).
