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Book Review: Rabbits in the Garden (Gardening Guidebooks #1) by Jessica McHugh

Rabbits in the Garden (Gardening Guidebooks #1) by Jessica McHugh

Ghoulish Books, 2022

ISBN: 978-1943720736

Available: Paperback

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

After reading Jessica McHugh’s Rabbits in the Garden, readers will never look at rabbits or gardening tools in quite the same way again.

 

Avery’s mom has a creepy interest in her garden, as well as in keeping Avery and her sister on the straight and narrow when it comes to boys. She is a big believer in correcting people’s negative proclivities with her own brand of vigilante justice… as in, murdering them.

 

Unfortunately for Avery, her innocent friendship with Paul and her weird mother-assigned responsibility for the behavior of rabbits in the family garden lead her to discover the truth about her mother’s evil ways, and put her in danger of spending the rest of her life in a nightmarish insane asylum. Her fellow residents have some serious problems and believe that Avery is trying to hide hers. The staff employs brutal methods designed to punish rather than heal. 

 

Avery struggles throughout the book, fighting against the lies that have been told about her, defending herself against the horrible crimes she has been accused of by her own mother, and dealing with the survival friendships she makes with the mentally ill where she has been imprisoned. The odds of changing her situation seem impossible, and Avery suffers far more disappointments than successes along the way. 

 

Although the restrained language and minimal horrific and sexual detail might appropriately put this story of young love and family dynamics under the YA umbrella for some, an adult reading of Rabbits in the Garden as a coming-of-age horror novel also propels the book over the YA line to older readers who will appreciate McHugh’s excellent storytelling and dynamic style. Even after the worst acts in the book have already been committed, there are always still more to come. Even after the most intense human responses to betrayal, emotional/physical pain and loss occur, there are inevitably still more of those to come too, but in supernatural form. This leads to a fast and furious build up of tension, anxiety, and crushing fear that grow in the shadow of evil and finally explode in the last chapters. 

 

Is Avery a lesson in female empowerment in the fight against injustice or will she be an example of “like mother, like daughter”? This is the first book of The Gardening Guidebooks Trilogy, so we will find out.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Book Review: Litani by Jess Lourey

cover art for Litani by Jess Lourey

Litani by Jess Lourey

Thomas & Mercer, 2021 (release date: Oct. 19)

ISBN: 9781542027014

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, compact disc, MP3   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

 

Set in the mid-1980s, Litani is a mystery/thriller dealing with the unpleasant subject of child molesters, but the book is couched into language that will work for younger readers.  While written for adults, it has value as a “crossover” title to the young adult crowd. Fourteen-year-old Francesca “Frankie” Jubilee moves in with her mom after her dad’s untimely demise.  She is quickly beaten up by three 10 year old girls. The girls allude to The Game, something many kids know about and fear.  Frankie finds her town to be one with an unpleasant past that centers around children that have gone missing over time.  The story follows a fairly predictable path, with Frankie trying to find the truth, and getting it in bits and pieces.  There’s a minor story thread of Satanism, but it’s really just window-dressing and could have been left out.  There’s a big reveal at the end to explain it all, and everything ends up okay, more or less.

 

The writing is simple and to the point, and the plot devices are familiar: Frankie’s past may have secrets, she makes one friend with a troubled past of his own, she doesn’t get along with her mom due to her being absent from her life for years, etc.  The Game itself is no big mystery, and most of the characters act in a pretty predictable manner. The predictability and basic nature of the writing may not be enough for adult readers to get caught up in the story, but for high school kids, it’s perfect. Entertaining enough to keep teens enthralled, there’s mystery, some excitement, a dead body, characters that kids will understand, and nothing too violent or graphic.  Example: while some of the characters are child molesters, the author wisely doesn’t use any graphic firsthand descriptions of molestation.  Same goes for the Satanic angle: no elaborate ceremonies or sacrifices, just a few pentagrams and candles.  It takes skill to write about vile subjects for a younger age bracket, and Jess Lourey does it extremely well.  The violence is also mild: a couple fights, a rock to the head, nothing over the top.  All of the above and the straightforward nature of Litani make it a good choice for teen readers.

 

 

Recommended for high school readers.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Women in Horror Month: Book Review: Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

cover art for Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Tales of the Fighting Pumpkins

( Amazon.com  |  Subterranean Press  limited edition hardcover  | Subterranean Press ebook edition )

Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

Subterranean Press, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1596069978

Available: Direct from Subterranean Press (limited edition hardcover, ebook edition), and Kindle edition

 

Into every high school class a cheerleading squad must come to fight against the forces of darkness: aliens, mud monsters, and eldritch creatures.  Squads that don’t survive until graduation are forgotten, and a mysterious force chooses a new cheer captain to recruit a new squad. This tight-knit group of cheerleaders, who may or may not be supernatural themselves, are the Fighting Pumpkins of Johnson’s Crossing, California. These are their stories.

The stories have been published over time, in different places: I first encountered them in the story “Away Game”, a clever, if predictable, story that appears in A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, edited by Jennifer Brozek, and have been seeking out their stories since then. I’m so glad they have now been collected together. Originally a limited edition published by Subterranean Press, the collection is now available as an ebook.

Because there have been many cheerleading squads over a long period of time, the stories can be set in a variety of time periods, with different characters. While the majority of the Fighting Pumpkins stories are linked stories about the same varsity squad, with half-vampire cheer captain Jude, squad historian Colleen, Laurie, who has a command voice, supernaturally strong Marti, and undead Heather, a few take place in other time periods and with other squads, such as the titular “Dying With Her Cheer Pants On”, in which the team dies calling Bloody Mary from a mirror during an alien invasion to exterminate the aliens, and “Switchblade Smile”, which features Jude’s mother Andrea, a vampire, as a cheerleader in the 1930s.

Character development is strong, and there is a lot of humor (how can there not be with a team called the Fighting Pumpkins?). McGuire draws from a kitchen-sink universe where any creature of the imagination can be real,  and remixes tropes to create her stories, but the sisterhood of the girls on the cheer squad is what makes the stories of the Fighting Pumpkins really enjoyable. Although a story might center on a specific character, these stories aren’t about a single individual or chosen one bound to save the world on her own. The girls are a team, and they stick together even when things are scary, or dangerous, or one of them turns out to be a monster. Two related stories that involve cheerleader Heather Monroe stood out as favorites, “Gimme a Z”, in which she rises from the grave and defends her sister Pumpkins from an undead mob, and “Turn the World Around”,  an often poetic story in which she helps a girl who mysteriously shows up in a Fighting Pumpkins uniform make a life-and-death decision that will affect the entire community. “School Colors” covers a cheerleading competition between the Fighting Pumpkins and an alien cheerleading squad that could decide the fate of the planet.

The stories of the Fighting Pumpkins are a little scary, but mostly a lot of fun. Those looking for a break from heavy or intense reading will find a lot to like, as will Buffy lovers.  YA readers may enjoy this collection as well.

 

Contains : strong language, violence, some gore. The story “Fiber” received some criticism from First Nations people regarding McGuire’s interpretation of the wendigo.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski