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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

 

Posted on June 28, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

Cover art for Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

 

Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2023

ISBN-13: 9781957133324

Available: Paperback, ebook

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com 

 

While Live Wire is the book title, it’s also an apt description of the writing: it crackles and snaps with electricity.  For a horror/thriller, this is a good one to start the summer with.  It’s also one of the nuttier ideas to come down the pike.  Transmission line towers that uproot themselves from the desert and start stomping around, wreaking havoc?  That’s one plot that certainly hasn’t been done before!

 

The book runs two threads concurrently.  In the first, former wannabe rock star Pale Brody, his young son, and a long-distance trucker named Ken Lightfeather are hunkered down at a ‘”last chance” desert gas station, riding out the worst electrical storm ever seen.  Also with them is the aging station owner, Otis Thompson.  The towers pull loose at the height of the storm, and the four of them are faced with a situation that is certainly not covered in the US Army’s Field Survival Manual.

 

The other thread covers the shadowy science and engineering firm whose experiments enabled the electrical pylons to go walkabout.  Nikki and Randy are two scientists who leave the firm in the middle of an experiment gone wrong, when it unleashes bloody carnage on the whole group.  The scientists eventually cross paths with the store group, and they band together to survive the towers from hell.  And hell (or something like it) just may be where the towers get their powers from, for they have abilities beyond just walking around and destroying things.  

 

Live Wire is an extremely engrossing book that will have readers zipping through pages, mainly due to the author’s excellent writing and sense of pace.  It’s that classic “tight but loose” style of writing: it drives the narrative and gets the story across, but doesn’t take itself too seriously.  There are a lot of hilarious asides and analogies, both from the characters and the narrator, giving the story an easy, flowing feeling that makes the pages move quickly.  The humor really shows up in the interrogation transcripts that are spaced throughout the book, as Nikki proves hilarious with her sarcastic way of belittling the investigators questioning her.  This book, at heart, is unquestionably a thrill ride, but the humor and wit of the characters help give the story a big boost.   Some readers might be a little bothered by the lack of fully detailed explanation for why things happen, but there’s enough there to keep most readers happy.  Some is left to the imagination, and the story is better off for it.

 

Bottom line: for a thriller with a bit of a horror bent to it, this one covers all the bases.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on May 22, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The Pineys, Vol. 9: The Witch Hunter Piney by Tony DiGerolamo

The Pineys, Book 9: The Witch Hunter Piney

The Pineys: Book 9: The Witch Hunter Piney by Tony DiGerolamo

South Jersey Rebellion Productions, 2022

ISBN-13: 9798833186749

Available: Kindle, paperback

Buy:  Amazon.com 

 

The Pineys is a series, and I have to admit, I have not read the previous 8 volumes, so I am coming at this as a brand new reader. Frankly, starting where I did makes me want to go back and read the previous volumes, as well as keep up with the series in the future.

 

This story opens in 1730 New Jersey, with an amusing account of Benjamin Franklin witnessing a failed witch trial, where the women are set free, and a near-fight ensues between them and a mysterious woman hunting them. The tale then switches to present day in Abe’s Hat, NJ. Shy Lewis Galloway, a witch boy, is getting ready for a date, and the rest of the Galloway family plan to have a Trivia Night. Lewis is trying his best to avoid the family finding out about his evening plans, but ultimately fails when he gets some hollered advice from a few of his relatives.

 

The Galloways are not an ordinary family, with an ordinary hunting lodge. They hunt hellspawn, and manage well. Lewis meets his date, Nikki, who herself has a unique family, and they have a great evening. Lewis is in love and wants everything to be normal. Unfortunately, during a family get-together, loudmouth Hemingway lets some information out about valuable, old, and very rare books they have in the lodge. That piques Nikki’s interest. When she spots a first edition Malleus Malleficarum, she is sure she has found the solution to a big problem of hers. After all, she hails from a long line of witch hunters, and that book holds the key to a dangerous weapon. The local museum houses the weapon, but the place is surrounded by numerous covens. What is a witch hunter to do?

 

I found the pacing to be quick, and the action was well done. There is a scene of particular interest because of a fight scene in a tearoom. I thought the many covens would be hard to track because there are so many that DiGerolamo included, but thankfully I was wrong in that. He made them unique enough that it was easy to follow. Keep an eye out for the Coven of the Basic. They’re tricky.

 

Recommended, but don’t do what I did: read the previous volumes first.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on May 16, 2023 by , Reply
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