Ottessa Moshfegh is the author of the darkly funny and bizarre My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which I read back in 2022 and enjoyed. This inspired me to read Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands, which I came across in the bargain section at my local independent bookstore. I did not enjoy Death in Her Hands. It is one of those books where the idea is better than the execution.
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The Circle is a sequel to both The Break and The Strangers. It is apparently the last of Vermette’s trilogy of novels that feature the same characters. SPOILER ALERT: Do not read any further it you plan on reading The Break and The Strangers.
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The Break is the first in a trilogy of novels by Katherena Vermette that are set in Winnipeg, Manitoba and feature a recurring cast of Métis characters. The Break is a good novel that tells a powerful story, but its frank depictions of sexual assault make this novel difficult to stomach at times.
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You know I love my historical fiction, and I am a fan of Kate Quinn, so of course I bought The Phoenix Crown, the joint endeavour of Kate Quinn and Janie Chang. I like The Phoenix Crown. It is an easy, fast-paced read that I breezed through in one day.
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Bad Cree is the debut novel of nehiyaw (Cree) writer Jessica Johns. The novel has been shortlisted for 2024 CBC Canada Reads. The reviews I read described Bad Cree as creepy, haunting and terrifying. I have been in the mood for creepy books lately, so this novel sounded good to me. Although it has some interesting aspects to it, Bad Cree turned out to be an underwhelming story.
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House of Leaves is a horror novel that was first published in 2000, but somehow I had never heard about it until recently. When I saw how absolutely bonkers the formatting of this book is, I knew I had to read it:
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I wanted to read Lone Women by Victor Lavalle as it is inspired by the women homesteaders who took advantage of the government’s offer of free land in the American mid-west to anyone who could turn the harsh, inhabitable landscape into a working farm. I love it when women are badass and prove that they can survive without men. Lone Women is also supposed to be a horror novel, and I like the horror genre, but I would say the horror in this novel is underwhelming. As compulsively readable as I found Lone Women to be, I did not find it to be very horrifying.
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The thought of sitting through Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour long movie based on David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI does not excite me, but I have no problem with reading for hours, so I bought the book instead. Killers of the Flower Moon is an especially fascinating non-fiction account of an incredibly dark period of early 20th century American history known by the Osage as the “Reign of Terror”. I think this is the type of book that true crime aficionados will eat up, and it also provides an important lesson on the history of white people’s treatment of indigenous peoples.
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I have never read anything by Grady Hendrix before, and I guess judging by How to Sell a Haunted House, he writes comic-horror novels. I bought How to Sell a Haunted House because I wanted something spooky to read, but this is not a scary novel. It is low-key terrifying, though, because of all the creepy dolls and puppets that populate the story. I still found it to be an interesting read as it is about how trauma can affect generations of a family.
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