readthesparrow's reviews
250 reviews

Oh boy. Where do I start?
 
 Let’s go with the obvious answer and say the beginning.
 
 The beginning is strong. Our protagonist, Shaun, has just committed murder via arson. Shaun does this in a bid to protect his mother, who has been abused by her husband for over a decade; despite severely injuring and almost killing her a few times, he's gotten away with the abuse due to being a cop. After burning the family home down with his sleeping stepfather inside, Shaun flees to his grandfather’s old hunting cabin to lay low.
 
 I liked this beginning! The stakes are high, and Shaun quickly becomes a protagonist I’m rooting for. I especially liked the way Shaun handles his mental health, as he used breathing exercises and other coping skills to handle the stress. The tension in this section was good, too—Shaun’s personal life was a focus and the setting, an almost completely abandoned town, was eerily intriguing. Honestly, the only reason this book reaches two stars for me is because of this decent beginning.
 
 However, once the actual plot of the book began, the book nosedived for me. The pacing and plot are a mess.
 
 Shaun is kidnapped by a doctor, drugged, and kept tied up in a room. Most of the plot is delivered via either people monologuing at Shaun, telling him things that, quite frankly, they have no reason to tell him. The villain is way too willing to explain what she's doing and why for absolutely no reason, and at a certain point, it gets very repetitive. Like, yes, I get it--the bad guy is doing lobotomies because her grandfather did them and she's mad she got bullied in med school.
 
 Eventually, Shaun gets moved to a table where he sits, paralyzed, with three other teens. The plot is then continued to be delivered via conversations around a table, which is marginally better, but still a struggle to get through after a while. Another reviewer (brittanylee0302) described the plot as being "characters just [sitting] at a table chatting [and] slipp[ing] in [and] out of consciousness." I can't put it into better words, because, yeah. That's pretty much all it is.

There are a few chapters where we POV hop into another character's head (usually into the bad guy's head or into Cassidy's head), but these chapters usually just re-iterate information we already know. Honestly, I don't know why Shaun is the main character, not Cassidy; she's got a way more interesting backstory than him, and if we'd followed her, we wouldn't be sitting at a table for most of the plot.

Once the table kids finally decide to escape and there's actually some action, the plot gets a little better, but then takes an unfortunate left into "Very Outdated YA Vibes" zone with the introduction of the other escapees, who have all named themselves after the medications they used to take. I get the vibes, but these feel like teens from a very different era than the current one.

Speaking of outdated YA vibes, the whole book reads like something that was written in the early 2000s, and not in a good way, especially considering the villains.

One of the villains, the man in charge of administering medicine and menial labor, falls directly into one of my most disliked tropes:

the big, mentally disabled guy who serves the actual bad guy, and usually has some kind of third-act turnaround. This is an extremely dated trope which is made worse by the fact that it is made explicit (with some on-page assault) that he sexually abuses the teens in his care. The doctor, too, has physical differences that are pointed out a few times.

Meanwhile, while most of our protagonists deal with some form of mental illness, none of them are disabled, and it is heavily hinted at several times that these mental illnesses are entirely misdiagnosed.

For all my issues with YA, the push for better representation and sensitivity isn't one of them. This books reads like one that was written before conversations about representation in YA became what it is today.

I won't get into the ending because, frankly, it's boring and predictable

(burning down the asylum? very original)

and it hints at a sequel I seriously doubt anyone will want.

The main plot that is revealed is that

there is a grand conspiracy across the USA to funnel troubled teens into what is, essentially, a mad doctor study with two goals: eradicate the current generation and perfect lobotomies in order to prevent teens from being troubled.

Here's the thing: the idea that parents and guardians are willing to, essentially, send their children to a living horror in order to "fix" them isn't impossible. Wilderness camps exist. The issue here, for me, lies in the execution.

The idea of "eradicating" the current generation (dubbed "Generation Annihilation") is almost throw-away; it's stated several times that it's one of the goals of the study, but how that will be accomplished with a grand total of three people on staff is never explored, and frankly, seems like it only exists because it makes for a killer title.

The kids are kept via a drug that makes them extremely thirsty and unable to move; however, they are never fed and rarely provided water. How on earth are all these kids alive? Some of them have been kept in this paralyzed state for months. The second the logistics of this drug are considered, the idea of the drug starts to immediately crumble.

The author is a social worker, and I presume that has something to do with the themes and writing of this book. I'm not the expert on the topic that she is, so I'm not going to make any statements about the real world situation of teens in the system. In terms of Generation Annihilation, however, I felt the handling of mental health, physical difference, disability, and commentary on the system and wilderness programs were not well-executed.

maybe it's been too long since I played the games and I just forgot but jesus christ that was surprisingly dark

A delightfully scary book.

I was a scaredy-cat, so I probably would have been completely unable to read it as a middle schooler--especially since Henderson's illustrations are absolutely terrifying! Not gonna lie, I'd love a movie or TV series adaptation of it.

If you loved the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie or the books, then you'll love this book!

This collection was such a treat. I not only got to read authors I already know and love (an amazing introduction by the author of My Heart is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones, and a fun werewolf story by author of Man Made Monsters, Andrea L. Rodgers) but also got introductions to a huge roster of new-to-me writers that I'm just dying to get to know better.

For folks who want a really meaty dark fiction collection to sink their teeth into, Never Whistle At Night is perfect. There are 26 stories, running the gamut from the extremely dark and extremely real ("Sundays" by David Heska Wanbli Weiden) to the darkly fantastical yet no less real ("Eulogy for a Brother, Resurrected" by Carson Faust).

All of the stories were fantastic (see my personal ratings below, under the spoiler tag), but my personal stand out favorites were "Navajos Don't Wear Elk Teeth" by Conley Lyons, "Heart-Shaped Clock" by Kelli Jo Ford, "Sundays" by  David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and "Collections" by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala.

"Kushtuka" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"White Hills" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Navajos Don't Wear Elk Teeth" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Wingless" - ⭐⭐⭐
"Quantum" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Hunger" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Tick Talk" - ⭐⭐⭐
"The Ones Who Killed Us" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Snakes Are Born in the Dark" - ⭐⭐⭐
"Before I Go" - ⭐⭐⭐
"Night in the Chrysalis" - ⭐⭐⭐
"Behind Colin's Eyes" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Heart-Shaped Clock" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Scariest. Story. Ever." - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Human Eaters" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"The Longest Street in the World" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Dead Owls" - ⭐⭐⭐
"The Prepper" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Sundays" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Eulogy for a Brother, Resurrected" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Night Moves" - ⭐⭐⭐
"Capgras" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"The Scientist's Horror Story" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Collections" - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Limbs" - ⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to the wonderful people behind Never Whistle at Night for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley!

As you may know, I have taken it upon myself to create THE SLASHER LIST, a comprehensive list and review of slasher-inspired novels. I’ve been away from the project for a bit (work, life, personal demons, you know how it is), so I haven’t been able to dedicate much time to pursuing the project.

So when I started reading Your Lonely Nights Are Over, I wanted so much, despite knowing it would make the fall worse if I was disappointed.

I am so happy to say that Your Lonely Nights Are Over was everything I wanted and more. I devoured this book in two sittings.

We’ve got twists, we’ve got turns, we’ve got messy queer characters, and, of course, the most important element of every slasher: buckets of blood.

The death scenes and the tension is brutal. These kids die, man, and Sass doesn’t hold back. There’s a Saw-trap-esque strangulation by barbed wire in the first few chapters.

I will say that if you’re like me and you read and watch a lot of slashers and are familiar with the tropes, the twists might be a bit easy to predict. I knew who the killer was pretty quickly (and the twist about the killer, because I’m familiar with Saw and Scream).

That all said, while I caught the foreshadowing and know the genre a bit too well for my own good, it wasn’t frustrating to wait for the characters to catch up with my realizations. Twists don’t have to be unpredictable to be fun.

This is a YA book. I typically don't like YA (I'm just not the target demographic), but I think that this is one of those YA books that, while definitely for teens, is fun to read as an adult, too. (Especially if you were in a queer club in high school. Because, woof, this book captured that feeling of young queer drama well.)

This book has an important message about queer community that is vital for young queer folk to learn, especially in an era of the internet full of toxic queer spaces. Ultimately, Your Lonely Nights Are Over is a story about friendship, community, and recognizing the danger and toxicity of queer abusers, all wrapped up in a witty, barbed-wire slasher with a breakneck pace.

Your Lonely Nights Are Over is definitely going to be one of the crowning jewels of THE SLASHER LIST, sitting in pride of place beside My Heart is a Chainsaw.

If you loved the Scream movies and want a book with that same smart, meta horror vibe, then you’ll have one hell of a time with Your Lonely Nights are Over. 

Thank you to Viking Books for Young Readers for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley! If you are interested in Your Lonely Nights Are Over, it is out now!

If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org.

User-defined content warnings are available via Storygraph.

Burnt-out Millennial medium Claire is hired as entertainment for the Wellington-Forge family at the family matriarch’s 80th birthday. When Claire and her best-friend-slash-spirit-guide, Sophie, discover that someone was murdered at the previous year’s celebration, they join forces with Bash, a depressed skeptic ex-detective, and Alex, a bon vivant non-binary teenager, to figure out the who, what, when, and why. 

I started reading this in line for coffee. It was painful to have to wait to read chapter two, and as soon as I got home, I lit a candle, cozied up in a blanket, and devoured Grave Expectations.

(By the by: Grave Expectations is perfect for the blanket + candle + rainstorm + book combo.)

For all my fellow Gen-Z out there who see a book about a Millennial that’s billed as humorous and go “oh no,” don’t worry. I was cautious too. But the book is genuinely hilarious, full of tongue-in-cheek humor poking fun at rich British people, à la Knives Out.

As an American, I did miss some of the cultural references, but never felt lost or confused.

The banter between the characters is excellent; the characters perfectly balance both slotting into their murder mystery character role places and being fully fleshed out individuals. 

Claire is a deeply sympathetic but also kind of pathetic main character, whose messy, incompetent method of investigating is balanced well with Sophie’s ghostly ability to walk through walls and acerbic Y2K teenage personality. Not to mention I'm a total sucker for the of "person who can see ghosts but it kind of sucks because dead people are mostly boring;" I find it to be an interesting, often funny take on the whole I See Dead People thing.

The characters are what make this book so memorable, and what make me really hope for a second book. There are still a lot of open threads Bell could follow–for example, what happened to Sophie–that I’m desperate for answers for because I have gotten so attached to these two girls.

I really needed a fun, quick-paced book to read. Grave Expectations hit the spot exactly. The best way I can describe the novel is like a cross between Knives Out and one of Eva Ibbotson’s ghost books (which I was obsessed with as a kid).

If you’re the kind of person who like a witty, sharp murder mystery and modern paranormal fantasy, I heavily suggest you give Grave Expectations a read.

Thank you to Vintage Anchor for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley. 

If possible, support indie bookshops or your local library!!

one day I will return to you Harrow my love

This week, a family member asked what I was reading. When I described New Millenium Boyz, he said “that’s depressing.”

Here’s the thing: yes, it is. This book is a super downer. New Millenium Boyz dives straight into the deep end of Y2K teenage boyhood, toxic masculinity, school shooter culture, and every kind of bigotry under the sun, and never comes up for air. 

And I loved it.

New Millenium Boyz is set in 1999-2000, but it’s also a reflection of now. The specifics have changed–MTV isn’t what it once was, the internet is a whole different beast, and we’re twenty years further down the road of arts and culture.

However. MTV may be dead but the trend economy is alive and hungry on TikTok. An internet that is more and more video-based demands performance from its users. The ways that Lu and Brandon and Shane talk about women could come word for word from an Andrew Tate video. Liking things is a personality trait, and if you like the wrong things or don't like things the right way you are lesser than.

The cultural obsession with self-image and displaying ourselves for consumption have only festered since the days of Handicams and dial-up internet. Things intended to be private are demanded to be public; public image is everything; and gun violence has only gotten worse. 

New Millenium Boyz is one of those novels that by virtue of its thematics and content must be compared to American Psycho. American Psycho a useful touchstone–if you’re interested in New Millenium Boyz, you’ve almost certainly read it–so I’ll use that comparison here.

In terms of prose, both New Millenium Boyz and American Psycho use dialogue-driven prose and heavy cultural references. Unlike American Psycho, though, New Millenium Boyz does not dedicate chapters entirely to music reviews. New Millenium Boyz also includes several letters between Brad and his girlfriend, Aurora, which serve both as breaks as well as sharp psychological examinations of Brad’s cognitive dissonance.

Unlike American Psycho, New Millenium Boyz’s characters–especially Brad and Shane–have moments of deep empathy. They’re far more human and far more emotionally driven than Patrick Bateman, whose cold, calculated, and empty monologues are a stark contrast to Brad’s edgey, yet desperate, attempts at philosophizing. 

Additionally, while New Millenium Boyz is certainly violent, it does not reach the absurd intensity of American Psycho’s violence. New Millenium Boyz is primarily concerned with the violence of young white men’s words and sexuality. There are scenes of self-harm, hate crimes, animal abuse, and sexual assault, but not of serial murder or extreme bodily mutilation on the level of American Psycho. 

In a way, though, the violence of New Millenium Boyz is far more real–Patrick Bateman is so intense as to reach unreality, whereas Brad and Lu’s violence is something that a teenage boy could do–have done–and gotten away with. 

New Millenium Boyz is a book that portrays but does not glorify or endorse the horrible thoughts and actions of Brad and Lu and Shane. 

While writing this review, I read an excerpt from a interview by Kazemi. He says it best: “... [the Y2K edgelord ethos] makes people uncomfortable with the reality and the freedoms that people had back then. With our current political climate, people romanticize this freedom. But what I argue in the book [is] this kind of edgelord dialogue is actually really myopic, and it just sounds like white noise; it doesn't really add anything into the culture. I'm sort of exposing [that] this false freedom we thought we had back then was actually a prison in itself.” (https://www.cbc.ca/arts/commotion/why-this-novel-about-y2k-nostalgia-is-being-called-dangerous-1.6965442)

New Millennium Boyz responds to a sanitized Y2K nostalgia by ripping open the underbelly of Y2K toxicity and augering the entrails. What it finds is this: the misogyny and cruelty and racism and homophobia that festered in Y2K is alive and hungry.

New Millenium Boyz is a sharp fever dream of a book. If you like the breathless, dialogue-driven prose of American Psycho or the fever-dream hell of a Brian Evenson novel then I suggest you take a look at New Millenium Boyz.

That said, like American Psycho and Brian Evenson, New Millenium Boyz isn’t something I would recommend freely. It’s very dark, very intense, and does not flinch in the face of absolutely vile toxic white masculinity (Y2K flavor). 

I would only recommend New Millenium Boyz to those who know they can handle the content, are interested in extreme dark literary horror that satirizes toxic masculinity, and recommend that if needed, you check content warnings via Storygraph.

Thank you to the Void Collective and to the author for sending me a physical ARC! I’m very excited to see what Kazemi does next.

Let Me Out is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel perfect for an angry queer autumn read despite a fractured, unfulfilling ending.

I adored the main cast. They fit together and play off one another well, and the way that they navigate an unwelcoming world together, from the small things (giving a ride to Terri, a guitarist, to her show and cheering her on) to the big things (covering for each other against parents and cops, providing first aid, and being ride or die ‘til the end) is so quintessentially queer that, despite the grim context, it warms my heart. 

I’m also head over heels for Lucifer. Like, can we appreciate their design? Hello???????

The main issue I have with Let Me Out is the ending. While there were some really interesting moments during that final scene, such as Lucifer possession-jumping from person to person during the chase scene, the storytelling became extremely fragmented and I had difficulty following the action in those last 10 or so pages.

Related to the ending, the pacing of the last half felt strange, too–I’m not a graphic novel expert, so maybe this is just the way things are done, but it felt like the main action of the book post what’s summarized on the back happened way too late. The spark that lights the kindling, Lupe punching her manager, doesn’t happen until about 60% of the way through, and the deal with the devil doesn’t happen until about 80% in. The part that interests me most–the deal with the devil–is rushed through. If I'm promised a deal with a devil, I want that to be narratively front and center, and it's just not in Let Me Out.

By the final page, there are several plot threads left dangling. I won’t list them here in the interest of avoiding spoilers, but there are several left unanswered, both ones introduced in the first ten pages and threads opened in that final 20%.

It is likely that cuts had to be made to meet page count, which is unfortunate. The ending’s potential fell flat. 

I think the page count is why I am often left wanting more from graphic novels–the stories are often hampered by heavily restricted available space, requiring heavy story cuts be made, which negatively impact the story’s structure and pacing.

While I enjoyed this graphic novel and loved the characters, I’m left wanting more from a fractured ending. I hope there’s a follow-up that picks up some of those dangling plot threads and features more Lucifer (my love). 

If you’re looking for a spooky, tense autumn read that centers queer experiences and can be finished in an afternoon, then I definitely suggest picking up Let Me Out.

Thank you to Oni Press for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley. If you are interested in Let Me Out, it releases 3 October 2023. You can find more information from the publishers. If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org!

The Body Below is, primarily, not interested in the mechanics of murder, but rather the effects of loss and violence on families and communities. It explores a complex web of questions: How do we fail each other? What is justice and what is right? Who and how do we decide that? Why can’t–or don’t–we just help each other? How do we mourn? What do we do with guilt?

As a result, the narrative is a slow-paced burn that focuses on building character and relationships. The two main characters, Conn and Celine, each have to grapple with their own past trauma as well as navigate the new, raw wound of loss torn into their lives and community.

That said, the book takes until the second half to really kick off. This isn’t a problem for me–I love a slow burn plot–but it means that if you’re looking for a snappy, breakneck mystery, The Body Below isn’t that.

There were, however, moments that struck me as strange or out of place. The first was the way that Celine talks about disability; she describes herself as “disfigured” after a car accident that caused her to lose two of her fingers. I am no expert, but it felt out of place for a psychologist, especially one that works with children, to use a word like “disfigured” to talk about her own body difference.

The second was that Selanski, a detective whose off-kilter, strange, somewhat acerbic personality made her my favorite character (what can I say, I love a mean woman <3) is, for some reason, referred to of the blue as “the Nazi lady detective” by several different characters. I’m really not sure if this was supposed to be a joke or what, but it didn’t make much sense in context. There’s nothing about her behavior that could be described as Nazi-like. It felt out of place and misogynistic. 

Finally, the ending. Oof. 

I am of two minds. On one hand, I loved the note that the book leaves off on. There’s a focus on healing and moving on and forgiveness that I found to be the perfect place to leave the characters I’d grown attached to. The way the narrative explores loss (both in mourning and betrayal) is intensely real, managing to capture the complexity of losing someone you thought you could trust. How do you heal from betrayal?

For example, my favorite quote comes from the final chapter: 

“He wasn't just dead--he had retroactively excised himself from me, had redacted himself from my life, leaving a furrow going back decades.”

On the other hand, these final chapters pull a last minute twist that just doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t fit as well thematically, it’s not narratively satisfying, and it feels cheap. This is the main reason why this book sits at three stars, not four; that final twist makes the book stumble on what would otherwise be a flawless landing.

I really enjoyed The Body Below as a piece of character work, but likely won’t be re-reading it. If you liked Tana French’s In the Woods and are looking for something to scratch a similar slow-burn character driven mystery itch, The Body Below might do it for you.

Thank you to Blackstone Publishing for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley. If you are interested in The Body Below, you can find more information from the publishers. If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org!