It's time again to check another box on the  Scaredy Cat Bingo Challenge   which consists of 25 reading prompts on a bingo board.  Not p...

It's time again to check another box on the 

Scaredy Cat Bingo Challenge 

which consists of 25 reading prompts on a bingo board. 

Not playing yet?  

Jump in anytime here



Today's prompt:

Let's Summon Demons 


Is there anything scarier than demons and possession in the horror genre? I don't think so. The thought that something can overtake you and that you won't have control over your own mind and body. *shudders* 

Today's prompt is all about possession, though it might not be in the expected way. 



Grab your crucifix and some holy water. 

Here are 18 books about possession to keep you up at night!
MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM BY GRADY HENDRIX

Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fifth grade, when they bonded over a shared love of E.T., roller-skating parties, and scratch-and-sniff stickers. But when they arrive at high school, things change. Gretchen begins to act….different. And as the strange coincidences and bizarre behavior start to pile up, Abby realizes there’s only one possible explanation: Gretchen, her favorite person in the world, has a demon living inside her. And Abby is not about to let anyone or anything come between her and her best friend. With help from some unlikely allies, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen. But is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?


A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS BY PAUL TREMBLAY
The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil. 


The Fervor by Alma Katsu

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.


GODDESS OF FILTH BY V. CASTRO

One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors.

Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else—something far more ancient and powerful.

As Father Moreno's obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her “bruja Craft crew” and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right. 
Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen

#EvilLibrarian He’s young. He’s hot. He’s also evil. He’s . . . the librarian.

When Cynthia Rothschild’s best friend, Annie, falls head over heels for the new high-school librarian, Cyn can totally see why. He’s really young and super cute and thinks Annie would make an excellent library monitor. But after meeting Mr. Gabriel, Cyn realizes something isn’t quite right. Maybe it’s the creepy look in the librarian’s eyes, or the weird feeling Cyn gets whenever she’s around him. Before long Cyn realizes that Mr. Gabriel is, in fact . . . a demon. Now, in addition to saving the school musical from technical disaster and trying not to make a fool of herself with her own hopeless crush, Cyn has to save her best friend from the clutches of the evil librarian, who also seems to be slowly sucking the life force out of the entire student body! From best-selling author Michelle Knudsen, here is the perfect novel for teens who like their horror served up with a bit of romance, plenty of humor, and some pretty hot guys (of both the good and evil variety).
 


The Gates by John Connolly

Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Halloween which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Road. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe. A gap in which a pair of enormous gates is visible. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out...

Can one small boy defeat evil? Can he harness the power of science, faith, and love to save the world as we know it?

Bursting with imagination, The Gates is about the pull between good and evil, physics and fantasy. It is about a quirky and eccentric boy who is impossible not to love, and the unlikely cast of characters who give him the strength to stand up to a demonic power.


Come Closer by Sara Gran

There was no reason to assume anything out of the ordinary was going on.
Strange noises in the apartment.
Impulsive behaviour.
Intense dreams.
It wasn't like everything went wrong all at once.
Shoplifting.
Fighting.
Blackouts.
There must be a reasonable explanation for all this.



Margaret Willow has never met an eleven-year-old as dangerous as Natalie Glasgow. Natalie spends her days comatose, but at night she prowls her mother’s home, unnaturally strong and insatiably carnivorous. With doctors baffled, Natalie’s mother reaches out to Margaret, an expert in the supernatural. But even Margaret is mystified and terrified by Natalie’s condition. She’s dying, and before she dies, she might kill someone. Has a demon clawed its way inside an eleven-year-old girl? Or does the source of this nightmare lie with Natalie’s dead father?

A tight, tense novella, The Possession of Natalie Glasgow twists the exorcism tale at every turn down to its final grave confrontation
Mister. B. Gone by Clive Barker

The Mister B. of the title is Jakabob Botch, a demon whose ghastly past could make even the most merciless sociopath whimper in sympathy. Born in the deepest regions of hell, the spawn of an abusive drunkard and his whorish wife, Jakabob escapes to the world above after suffering fiendish torture. Once topside, he lands conveniently in 15th-century Mainz, the home of printing inventor Johannes Gutenberg. However, Mister B. isn't interested in merely observing history; like any other self-respecting diabolical being, he's just searching for a new demonic angle. A ghoulishly good fright fest. 


The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

Four decades after it first terrified the world, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is back! An extraordinary classic work of horror and dark paranormal suspense. In this stunning 40th Anniversary Edition, a desperate mother and two priests fight to free the soul of a little girl from a supernatural entity of pure malevolence.


RING SHOUT BY P. DJÈLÍ CLARK

In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world? 

BUILD YOUR HOUSE AROUND MY BODY BY VIOLET KUPERSMITH

Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge.

1986
 The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family loses her way in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed.

2011
 A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.

The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Alongside them, we meet a young boy who is sent to a boarding school for the métis children of French expatriates, just before Vietnam declares its independence from colonial rule; two Frenchmen who are trying to start a business with the Vietnam War on the horizon; and the employees of the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co., who find themselves investigating strange occurrences in a farmhouse on the edge of a forest. Each new character and timeline brings us one step closer to understanding what binds them all.


Part puzzle, part revenge tale, part ghost story, this book takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last page.



In the realm of Awara, where gods, monsters, and humans exist side by side, Miuko is an ordinary girl resigned to a safe, if uneventful, existence as an innkeeper’s daughter. But when Miuko is cursed and begins to transform into a demon with a deadly touch, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life. Aided by a thieving magpie spirit and continuously thwarted by a demon prince, Miuko must outfox tricksters, escape demon hunters, and negotiate with feral gods if she wants to make it home again. But with her transformation comes power and freedom she never even dreamed of, and she’ll have to decide if saving her soul is worth trying to cram herself back into an ordinary life that no longer fits her… and perhaps never did. 
A reluctant medium discovers the ties that bind can unleash a dangerous power in this compelling Malaysian-set contemporary fantasy.

Jessamyn Teoh is closeted, broke and moving back to Malaysia, a country she left when she was a toddler. So when Jess starts hearing voices, she chalks it up to stress. But there's only one voice in her head, and it claims to be the ghost of her estranged grandmother, Ah Ma. In life Ah Ma was a spirit medium, the avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she's determined to settle a score against a gang boss who has offended the god--and she's decided Jess is going to help her do it.

Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she'll also need to regain control of her body and destiny. If she fails, the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.
 


Exorcist Falls by Jonathan Janz 

Chicago is gripped by terror. The Sweet Sixteen Killer is brutally murdering young women, and the authorities are baffled.

When the police are called to an affluent home in the middle of the night, they learn that a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy has attacked his family. The boy exhibits signs of demonic possession, and even more troublingly, he knows too much about the Sweet Sixteen killings. Father Jason Crowder, a young priest assigned to the case, must marshal his courage in order to save the boy and the entire city from the forces of evil.

But this is a darkness mankind has never encountered before. It craves more than blood. And it won’t rest until it possesses Father Crowder’s soul.

This volume brings together the original novella that started it all—Exorcist Road—and an all-new full-length novel (Exorcist Falls) for a shattering experience in supernatural terror.


Small Town Monsters by Diana Rodriguez Wallach
Vera Martinez wants nothing more than to escape Roaring Creek and her parents' reputation as demonologists. Not to mention she's the family outcast, lacking her parents' innate abilities, and is terrified of the occult things lurking in their basement.

Maxwell Oliver is supposed to be enjoying the summer before his senior year, spending his days thinking about parties and friends. Instead he's taking care of his little sister while his mom slowly becomes someone he doesn't recognize. Soon he suspects that what he thought was grief over his father's death might be something more...sinister.

When Maxwell and Vera join forces, they come face to face with deeply disturbing true stories of cults, death worship, and the very nature that drives people to evil.


The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. It may seem like a good ghost buster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle--but there's a risk: Sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. While trying to back out of this ill-conceived career, Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London - just to pay the bills, you understand. But what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize. That's OK: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off... 


  

I don't know about you but I'm so excited for some of this month's new releases. Paranormal, sci-fi, creatures, apocalyptic...th...




I don't know about you but I'm so excited for some of this month's new releases. Paranormal, sci-fi, creatures, apocalyptic...they are all here!

Take a gander below at this month's roundup of anticipated horror releases for March 2022. 


It's time again for another box on the  Scaredy Cat Bingo Challenge , which consists of 25 reading prompts on a bingo board. Not playing...

The Deep by Alma Katsu

Weird shit happens on the Titanic and true to history, this version sinks too. A maid survives the sinking and after a brief stint in an asylum, decides to go on its sister ship turned medical hospital, The Britannic, with absolutely no medical training because why the hell not? Is Annie the maid crazy or is there something supernatural going on here?  At least we won't have to argue that Jack could have fit on that door with Rose.


tidepool by nicole willson

Sorrow's brother Henry disappears so off she goes to the small seaside town of Tidepool to find out what happened to him. First off, who names their kid Sorrow? That's just setting her up for failure and that's before the bodies start washing up looking like chew toys for giant ocean monsters. This is the kind of book where you constantly scream at the protagonist to get the hell outta dodge but they say "You're not my mom" and stay.


Flowers for the sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

Stuck on a boat surrounded by air and sea monsters, survivors of a flooded kingdom are struggling to exist. One of them, a woman named Iraxi is extremely pregnant and like most pregnant women, doesn't really want to be pregnant anymore except for very different reasons. She resents everyone, including her unborn er, thing. The ship reeks, the people reek, and being pregnant also reeks. 
Read my review.



This anthology is part of Eerie River Publishing's It Call From series with "twenty brutal tales of horror from the deep blue sea." There's killer kelp, menacing mermaids, elder gods, family curses, and all things in between. 
Read my review


the kelping by Jan Stinchcomb 

The Kelping by Jan Stinchcomb is number nine in Unnerving's Rewind or Die series. Those of you expecting a horror-filled flesh-eating mermaid tale might find it a little tame. What's inside these 67 pages is a more insidious tale of mermaids infiltrating a sleepy little seaside town. 
Read my review.
Saltblood by t.c. parker

People are shipped off to an island with a Faraday cage prison to reflect on being trolls on social media. It's a peaceful place, except for—you knowthe whole evil monster bit.


The Devils shallows by Debra Castaneda

Salt marshes are weird places anyway but add an urban legend about the Slough Devil and it's extra weird. Adam doesn't believe in monsters, but that's okay, the monsters still believe in him. 


sea witch by Sarah Henning

Now we get to the Little Mermaid retellings. C'mon, I had to toss a few in. 

Set in 1860s Denmark, Evie (the witch) meets a mermaid with the face of her dead friend. They fall for a couple of princes and Evie has to help her new friend keep her legs. Life's full of tough choices, isn't it?


Drown by Esther Dalseno 
Sticking more closely to the original by Hans Christian Andersen, this one is dark as it should be. No singing or friends named Flounder. Matter of fact, a girl has no name...nor does anyone else. It's just The Little Mermaid or The Prince.  


Well, there you have it. 18 book choices to check off the Under The Sea box on your Scaredy Cat Bingo card. If you haven't started playing yet, check out the board and jump in at any time. 

Publication date: October 21st, 2021 Goodreads H ow do you survive hearing your family being brutally murdered over the phone? For Father Ra...




Publication date: October 21st, 2021


How do you survive hearing your family being brutally murdered over the phone? For Father Raul Figeuroa, all faith and hope are lost. Turning away from the priesthood behind, he retreats to his aunt's empty farmhouse in upstate New York, hoping to drink himself to oblivion. But he's not alone in the house. Something is trying to reach out to him. Or is he losing his grip on reality? When his childhood friend Felix comes to visit, things take a darker turn. The deeper they dig into the mystery, the closer they get to hell literally breaking loose.

Shea has a knack for producing raw, emotionally driven horror with imperfect, broken characters. His novel Creature broke my heart with its flawed characters and poignant storytelling and Faithless is no different. 

Faithless starts with anxiety-fueled adrenaline as Father Raul Figeuroa drives home one rainy night only to hear his family cry out as they are attacked and killed. He makes it home minutes too late. The police have no leads and the loss sends Raul reeling. He retreats to his late aunt's farm where he spent time growing up, truly hoping to drink himself stupid. And he does. 

After the first few pages, Faithless loses its momentum but I wouldn't expect any novel to hold such a frenetic pace. It's a slow burn as we cycle through the anguish and heartbreak that Raul experiences, even as he tries to drown his sorrows. Shea has created this character that your heart can't help but bleed for as he mourns his family. The loss is so profound that his faith, which has carried him for so long, suddenly can't be maintained. It's a thought that any person grieving might think: Why does God let these things happen? Only Raul's loss has completely ripped away his faith and in turn, his sense of self. It's heartbreaking and raw and Shea leaves us drifting away completely with Raul, unsure of his faith and his sanity. 

Strange things start happening in the house. He hears the voice of his wife coming through the vents and the laughter and footsteps of his children overhead. Is it just the grief or is he truly haunted by the restless spirits of his family? The appearance of his old friend Felix can't even shock Raul out of his stupor, though Felix offers what the police can't—a possible unmasking and potential retribution. Felix at least breaths some life into the story during a long period of drinking, pill-popping, and wallowing. He leaves Raul to go find answers and it's a much-needed break from the stagnation at the farm. 

Then we truly go down the rabbit hole. This ending is so far-fetched I can't even. It's gory and action-packed but it's out there. Ghosts, cults, attack cats. The eschewing of predestination being more powerful than the battle of good vs. evil. I don't know where I expected Faithless to go, but this was not it. I loved the setup but not the follow-through. Oh, and Bruiser. Always have to love the cat. 

Publication date: February 2nd, 2022   Goodreads M avis Corvid can't remember. Not who she is, nor where she came from. It's been si...




Publication date: February 2nd, 2022


Mavis Corvid can't remember. Not who she is, nor where she came from. It's been six months and nothing. Zip. Zilch. Now she's settling into a new life. She's back on her feet, literally, and working at a garage in Eustace Park for a boss as grumpy as he is handsome. She has an apartment, friends, and an insatiable curiosity about werewolves.

No one knows why the wolves disclosed their existence to the world, but the one-year anniversary of their reveal is fast approaching. A fight brews between two alphas that could threaten the rest of humanity unless Mavis can remember who she was. She knows she's not a werewolf, but she is something else.

When pushed from a balcony Mavis' second nature reveals itself. She shifts into a magpie to save her skin. Now she'll have to harness her strange abilities and investigate her disappearance to find out what happened to the Aldwulf, the alpha of all alphas. However, the past is gone and Mavis isn't the same person. With the opportunity to be whoever she wants, what kind of person will she choose to be? 
Set in an alternate version world where werewolves not only exist but have revealed themselves to the public, this urban fantasy by Amber Boudreau is a great addition to the genre. The world-building is solid, the characters are relatable, and there is enough mystery here to keep the pages turning. (Who was Mavis before? What happened to the Alpha?)

After waking up six months ago without a clue, Mavis Corvid still can't remember who she is. She's gone on to choose a new name and quickly rebuilt a life for herself. She is a strong character who didn't spend time feeling sorry for herself when she couldn't remember the particulars of her former life. She just picked herself up and went on with some assistance from those around her. I thought it was unique that she wasn't stressed out that she couldn't remember and that she got to living as best she could. Boudreau also refrained from the typical shifter profile and constructed Mavis as a bird shifter or "two-natured". Deciding to have the main character transform into a magpie kept the shifter trope from feeling stagnant and overused.  

The relationship between Aitch the garage owner and Mavis' boss, was rather humorous. He's a cantankerous thing but Mavis is unfazed and is as cheery as he is cranky. This isn't a completely romance-free urban fantasy but it doesn't overwhelm the plot. It's more of a will they/won't they type of romance that may be developed in future books but it nonetheless made for entertaining banter and heightened tension. 

The ending certainly leaves the door open for a second novel or even the possibility of a series in this new world that I wouldn't be opposed to at all. I enjoyed Mavis coming into her own, learning about herself, and there was enough character growth to move on to a second novel. If you like your urban fantasy to be completely wrapped up at the end, this one may frustrate you a bit. There's a lot left unsaid and unanswered arranging it perfectly for a continuance. I'll definitely be keeping Boudreau on my radar for future releases. 

Today's mini-reviews are Boneset & Feathers by Gwendolyn Kiste, Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo, Certain Dark Things by Silvia...

Today's mini-reviews are Boneset & Feathers by Gwendolyn Kiste, Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo, Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.



You don't know their fire is coming until it's too late. That's exactly the way the witchfinders like it. As an isolated enchantress, Odette knows this too well--she lost nearly her whole family to the last round of executions, barely escaping with her own life. All the magic she could conjure wasn't enough to protect her mother and sister, a burden that leaves a despondent Odette practically wishing she'd burned with the rest.

Now it's five years later, and as the last witch left from her village, Odette has exiled herself to the nearby woods where she's sworn off all magic, hoping instead for quiet and for safety. But no witch has ever been permitted a peaceful life.

It starts with crows tumbling out of the clouds and spectral voices on the wind that won't leave her alone. Then there are those midnight visits to the graveyard that she can't quite remember in the morning and the strange children following her everywhere she goes. Odette wants to forget magic, but her magic doesn't want to forget her. Meanwhile, the former friends she left behind in the village are cowering together, hiding from the ghostly birds they believe she's sent to torment them for abandoning her. But that's only the beginning of their problems, as Odette soon discovers their worst nightmare is about to come true--the witchfinders are returning. And this time, the decree is clear: to burn the witch that got away.

With the men drawing nearer to the village, Odette must face the whispers from the dead and confront her fear of her own growing power if she wants any chance of stopping the army of witchfinders determined to rid the countryside of magic once and for all. 

Publication date: November 23rd, 2020
Add to Goodreads

My Thoughts...

This is my first book of Gwendolyn Kiste's and it won't be my last. Beautifully written, her flowing style took a bit to get into the cadence but once I did, I adored it. While the novella is about a witch, it does more than live up to all the tired tropes about witches. More dark fairytale than horror, there are birds falling dead from the skies and returning changed, an enchanted forest that never spits you out where you came in, strange children, and of course, magic. 

Odette has a reputation as an outsider. The townspeople fear her and instead of blaming their loss on the witchfinders, they choose to blame her as the source of their troubles. Known as the witch who would not burn, Hunted by the witchfinders, Odette not only faced the flames, she somehow consumed them and carry them inside her skin. She's a great character, doubt-filled and living in isolation in the woods away from those who fear her. 

A coming of age story, yes, but this is also a powerful and moving fight for identity, sisterhood, and the right for women to exist without being cowered by men. 


This horrifying retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale set in present-day Chicago is an edge of your seat, chills up the spine, thrill ride. ‪ When Detective Lauren Medina sees the calling card at a murder scene in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, she knows the Pied Piper has returned. When another teenager is brutally murdered at the same lagoon where her sister’s body was found floating years before, she is certain that the Pied Piper is not just back, he’s looking for payment he’s owed from her. Lauren’s torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe, and keeping a promise she made long ago with her sister’s murderer. She may have to ruin her life by exposing her secrets and lies to stop the Pied Piper before he collects.

Publication date: February 9th, 2021
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My Thoughts...


There is always a dark side to fairytales and Pelayo gives us a new ominous twist to the Pied Piper, melding fairytale roots, dark urban horror, and police procedural. Chicago's dark and mean streets are laid bare, but there's also beauty there and Pelayo's love of the city shines through. We're given a completely unlikeable female main character, but this is not without planning, as it's also a statement about police and their abusive power without repercussions—a highly controversial topic in today's media. There's a lot of information delivered throughout which at times made the story feel very laden. There's no denying the horror elements of the story, but it almost felt as it was trying to be too many things at once. 



Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerized.

Atl needs to quickly escape the city, far from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn't include Domingo, but little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of corpses stretches behind her, local cops and crime bosses both start closing in.

Vampires, humans, cops, and criminals collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive? Or will the city devour them all?

Publication date: September 7th, 2021
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My Thoughts...

 Sparkley vampires need not apply. Certain Dark Things bring back the cold, aloof vampires of days past. Set in Mexico City, Moreno-Garcia shies away from the busy, bright streets into the back alleys and subway tunnels. It's a very neo-noir take, with gangs, drug cartel wars, and multiple sub-species of vampires. The relationship and dialogue between Atl and Domingo seemed awkward and yet, was still amusing. The lore and legend of vampires were unique and interesting but the best part was the world-building. It's gritty and dark with complex morally grey characters. 

Publication date: June 22nd, 2021 Links:  Amazon  |  Goodreads The third and final installment in Sean's rip-roaring 'firefighters m...




Publication date: June 22nd, 2021

The third and final installment in Sean's rip-roaring 'firefighters meet dragons' fantasy series

In the final installment of the Smoke Eaters series, the New United States Army has taken over and America has devolved into a full-on dragon apocalypse. Smoke eaters are banned and have gone into hiding to avoid being held prisoner by the soldiers.

Guiellermo Contreras is a private in the NUSA, and when he's accused of potentially being a smoke eater upon pain of death, he escapes and sets out to find the heroes who disappeared years before. But what he discovers is that the NUSA has been working on something unthinkable, and it's going to take more than a few smoke eaters to stop them.

Read now
 
After having read Ash Kickers, I couldn't wait to get back into this dragon-filled world. I was surprised that after the cliffhanger ending of Ash Kickers, we start all over with a brand new character but it didn't take long to get back into the flow. The world has progressed through finding out how to deal with the dragons to more of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The smoke eaters who were idolized years before have been banned. The New United States Army (NUSA) is not the organization that Guillermo Contreras believed it was. They aren't entrusted with keeping the world safe and are in fact, mercenaries who are bullying the civilians into providing resources for them. Contreras steals a tank with the intent of returning home, but things don't always turn out as expected. 

Guilly is a well-crafted character that you can't help but root for from the start. He's listening to his conscience and attempts to flee the NUSA by stealing one of their tanks all while wearing nothing but a bathrobe. You'd think this would be a fantastic idea and that he could escape easily, but the tanks only go so fast, making this more of a humorous would-be sluggish getaway. Upon finding out that he is a smoke-eater and part of a now underground group that he completely fanboyed over, it only gets better from there. 

Once again, Grigsby has continued his portrayal of this unique, but entertaining world. While the setting is much more dystopian than the previous book, it hasn't lost any of its high stakes. There's plenty of action, fire-spewing, and dragon fighting. Plenty of battles to be fought and danger to run towards. There's even the delightful appearance of some of his previous book's characters, tying all the books together. Flame Riders surprised me. Given the time jump and the incongruous new POV, I expected to not enjoy it as much as Ash Kickers but I devoured it in just a few hours.