Review: Where He Can't Find You - Darcy Coates - November 2023 This morning as I do, I tried one book and it turned out to be a bust. So I clicked into another that piqued my interest and wow, the second one I tried had me hooked from the very first page. That book was Darcy Coates's Where He Can't Find You. I had previously tried one book Hunted from this author which unfortunately turned out to be a DNF. This one however, was the complete opposite and was an amazing read that blurs fiction with a feel of fact. In a small town named Doubtful, people go missing and when they do they often disappear out of thin air and then their bodies turn up dismembered and stitched with other people's body parts in red thread. If you find a spot all covered in red thread, it indicates that a dead body is near - a victim of a serial killer or a supernatural being called the Stitcher. Abby and her friends have grown up with the rules and try to follow them to protect their families a...

Review: The Only One Left - Riley Sager - June 2023 Near the end of last year, I read Survive the Night by Riley Sager and decided that I was going to read all of Riley Sager's booklist I was determined to get it done by the end of 2023 and now I can tick the goal off my reading list as with The Only One Left finished, I am now up to date with his books. This book was set in the 1970s and flashed back to 1929 when it was said that Lenora Hope killed her parents and her sister Virginia. As the Only One Left surviving, Lenora was arrested but let go due to not enough evidence. Now 54 years later, she still resides in her mansion Hope's End and Kit McDeere has been given a second chance as a caregiver after she too was accused of killing her mother in an act of euthanasia. Kit has been hired to be Lenora's nurse and caregiver. In the house still resides Mrs Baker and Archie who have been with the Hope family even before that fateful night. Lenora hopes to tell her story and h...

Review: Nightingale House - Steve Frech - June 2020 This was a read I should have done during Spooktober as it had the same feeling as books like The September House where you have a freaky house filled with ghosts and tragedies. Nicole and Daniel Price have found the perfect house and an old one at that, however just before the move for Daniel and his family, they are involved in a car crash. Nicole passed away and his daughter Caitlyn was injured but survived. Now Daniel must maneuver life in their new home as a single father. However, as they are about to learn, they are not alone in their house as strange things start happening including Daniel seeing Nicole's ghost, having nightmares, hearing his daughter Caitlyn playing with ghosts, and imaginary friends who aren't imaginary in the sense they did exist at one point. Nightingale House goes back and forth to the 1900's where we meet young Rebecca who has just turned seventeen and has been given a journal as a present....

Review: There's No Way I'd Die First - Lisa Springer - September 2023 Recently, I have noticed a trend in fiction especially YA fiction called Black Horror. These are books where the main character is a black female who ends up being either the final girl or one of the survivors. Traditionally in horror films and books, the black female is one of the first to die unless, of course, you were Paris Hilton in the remake of House of Wax. As someone who has watched a lot of horror films and to be honest, I am not bothered that the white people are dying first if I were stuck in a horror movie, I think I would be one of the first to die as I'm not the survivor type. In There's No Way I'd Die First, we meet Noelle who runs a movie group site called Jump Scares where she hosts video-watching parties of mainly black horror films. Her dream is to get into film school and start her podcast. She decides to hold an exclusive Halloween horror party and invites 12 influencers in t...

        Review: You're Not Supposed To Die Tonight - Kalynn Bayron - June 2023 With October being the month of Spooktober and reading mysteries and horrors, I decided my first October read would be Kalynn Bayron's "Your'e Not Supposed to Die Tonight". This book starts as a fun summer experience where a group of teens work at a local Summer Camp pretending to be in a Serial Killer slasher film. It reminded me a bit of a local attraction we have here in New Zealand called Spookers, but that is set in an old mental institution. Charity is often the 2IC and also has the role everyone covets which is the "final girl". I did love the irony in this as often black people are the ones that die first in horror movies and I loved that this one took a different perspective. It was great to see the race reversal. The book though takes a weird twist about halfway as the characters learn that there is an old secret society called The Owl Society and that the Summer ...