Hell Followed With Us – Andrew Joseph White

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Andrew Joseph White claims his debut novel Hell Followed With Us was written because he was angry. On his website, we’re told “His work focuses on the intersection of transgender and autistic identity through the lens of horror, monstrosity, violence, and rage.” Got that right.

Benji is on the run. His father has just been killed and the Angels and their Graces are hunting him down, except that there is not really any place to go. That’s because these people – part of the cult that raised Benji – have unleased Armageddon via The Flood, decimating the world’s population.

The hellscape of the world White imagines is unlike anything I have ever read before. This is a world devoid of humanity, where goods are bartered with the exchange of human ears, where the monsters are

made of corpses and the Flood – sharpened ribs lining its back in a row of spines, eyeballs blinking between sinew, muscles so swollen they split the skin

At the beginning of the novel, when Benji is recaptured by the Angels, it is not so they can kill him: he’s important to the cult because he is a Seraph, or about to become one anyway. He has the power to control the Graces and The Flood and also, his mother is kind of a big deal at New Nazareth. Before they can get Benji back to New Nazareth, though, he is rescued by a ragtag group of teen resistors from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Centre (ALC). It is his relationship with these people, specifically the handsome sharp-shooter, Nick, that propels Benji on a dangerous mission to take down New Nazareth once and for all.

Hell Followed With Us is an allegorical tale. Before Benji was Benji, he was Esther, betrothed to Theo. At their engagement ceremony, Benji’s mother tries to find a passage about marriage, something that would “hammer home” Benji’s role as a wife, something that could “beat the boy” out of him. Throughout the novel, Benji struggles to find acceptance and while the monsters might be dreamt from Whites very scary imagination, the big ideas- of acceptance, or personal autonomy, of the dangers of blindly following are anything but fiction.

Great read.

Midnight on Beacon Street – Emily Ruth Verona

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Despite suffering from crippling panic attacks, Amy is a much sought after babysitter. Tonight, she is looking after siblings Ben, 6, and his older sister Mira, 12, while their single mother, Eleanor, is out on a date. Amy likes Eleanor, and she likes babysitting there because her boyfriend, Miles, is not only welcome to visit, Eleanor “encourages it.” For someone who hasn’t had the best luck with relationships, she’s relatively smitten with the idea of Amy and Miles and their young love.”

Amy orders pizza and waits on the arrival of Miles. She’s brought a couple horror movies, her favourite genre. There’s something about them that calms her down, strange as she knows that sounds.

Emily Ruth Verona’s debut Midnight on Beacon Street begins at the end.

The blood beneath Ben’s bare feet is too fresh to be sticky. It’s hard not to slip. And so, the little boy holds still – so very still. Stiller than he has ever held before.

This is six minutes after midnight. The novel is non-linear, jumping back and forth to various points earlier in the night, but also to a time six years before, when Amy is being sat by Sadie, “a bright-eyed, fresh-faced fifteen-year-old girl.”

Amy’s night does not go as planned. There are several unexpected visitors; Mira is sullen; Ben is withdrawn. And the whole thing culminates with Ben standing in a pool of blood in the kitchen. Although not particularly swift moving (the novel clocks in just under 200 pages, but it isn’t a fast read), I found it entertaining. Amy is a terrific character and the novel nods and winks at all your favourite horror movies and tropes.

Suffer Love – Ashley Herring Blake

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When his parents separate, and his father moves to Boston, Sam’s mother takes Sam and his younger sister, Olivia, to Woodmont, a suburb of Nashville to regroup. Sam just wants to get on with life, play baseball, and graduate.

Hadley St. Claire has been looking for love in all the wrong places ever since she found out that her father cheated on her mother. Now her parents are barely speaking to each other and she can’t stand to look at her father. Her most meaningful relationship is with her bestie, Kat. That is, until she and the new kid get paired together to rewrite an act from one of Shakespeare’s plays. (And, no, they don’t choose Romeo and Juliet.)

Sam and Hadley connect almost immediately. Perhaps they sense in each other that deep well of hurt, but Sam knows something that Hadley doesn’t and so he does his level best to keep his distance.

I want her to come with me and I want her eyes on mine and her words to fill up the space in my car. There are a million voices in my head right now, screaming about what a delusional idiot I am, but with her standing right in front of me, her lashes fanning her pink cheeks, they’re easy to ignore.

And, as is the way of books like this, these two can’t stay away from each other – try as they might.

Suffer Love is a book about messy family relationships, forgiveness and first love. Sam and Hadley are both likeable characters just trying to figure it all out. The book is a little bit sweet and a little bit angsty and I appreciated that Ashley Herring Blake didn’t try to go for a happily ever after, even though you really hope these two young people actually manage to get theirs.

Darkmere – Helen Maslin

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I love a ghost story, especially if it takes place in a creepy castle on a windswept British coastline. Helen Maslin’s YA novel Darkmere offers readers two stories, one more successful than the other.

Seventeen-year-old Kate has been invited to Darkmere for the summer holidays by Leo, the boy she has a bit of a crush on. Darkmere is a castle he’s inherited, although he suggests “it isn’t a posh castle. It’ll be in a shit state because no one’s lived there for years. But it’s still a castle. And best of all it’s supposed to be haunted.”

Kate agrees to join Leo and his friends Beano, Hat-Man Dan and his girlfriend Lucie (who is only allowed to go if there will be another girl) and Jackson. The castle turns out to be remote and without any modern comforts or access to the Internet.

Darkmere Castle was built in 1825 by George Francis St Cloud as a wedding present for his young bride, Elinor. Tragically, Elinor took her own life during the second year of her marriage, and local legend has it that she died cursing her husband and his male heirs.

It is Elinor’s story that makes up the other part of the story. We learn about how she comes to be St Cloud’s bride and what her life is like when she arrives at Darkmere. As we learn more about her story – and it’s definitely the more interesting of the two narratives – things start to go sideways for the teens in the modern setting.

Maslin’s story, while not particularly scary, is atmospheric and filled with the requisite secret passages, strange sightings, and things that go bump in the night. I could have done without Kate’s story, really, although I guess without her arrival things at Darkmere would never have been stirred up.

Dark Matter – Blake Crouch

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Jason Dessen, the protagonist of Blake Crouch’s novel Dark Matter has the perfect life. Well, no life is perfect, but he loves his wife, Daniela, once a promising artist, now a teacher, and his teenaged son, Charlie. His job as a physics professor at Lakemount College affords him a nice life but everyone knows that he could have had so much more if he had chosen a different path.

When the novel opens, Jason is off to raise a glass to his former college buddy Ryan, who has just won the prestigious Pavia Prize. On the way home, he is mugged and abducted and things only get stranger from there.

I am not going to pretend to understand anything about the science that happens in this book, but I honestly don’t think that it matters all too much if you do. Ultimately this is a book that examines the different trajectories that your life might take if you had made different decisions. It posits that every time you come to a fork in the road, and you make a selection, another version of you and the other choice carries on. That’s an extremely simplified version, of course.

The action of the story unfolds as Jason tries desperately to return to his old life while encountering versions of himself that actually want to continue living their chosen lives. Essentially, it’s the multiverse and although some of it was certainly beyond my understanding, the human side of it was completely relatable.

“Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse?”

Ah, yes, the road not taken.

House of Hollow – Krystal Sutherland

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I can’t say that fantasy is one of the genres I gravitate towards. I’m not sure what it is about other-worldly fiction; I guess I just like my stories to be rooted in reality. But that doesn’t mean I never read them nor haven’t enjoyed some of the fantasies that I have read. I very much liked Empire of the Vampire; Starling House was slightly less successful for me. Krystal Sutherland’s YA novel House of Hollow lands squarely on the winner side for me.

Sisters Iris, Vivi and Grey are special.  Not only did something remarkable happen to them when they were children (all three disappeared from an Edinburgh street, only to reappear one month later with absolutely no memory of where they’d been), but now the two oldest sisters have fabulous careers in fashion and music, while the youngest, the narrator Iris, is just hoping to get through her last year of high school.

Everyone knew who we were. Everyone had heard our story. Everyone had their own theory about what had happened to us. My sisters used this to their advantage. They were very good at cultivating their own mystery like gardeners, coaxing the heady intrigue that ripened around them into the shape of their choosing. I simply followed in their wake, quiet and studious, always embarrassed by their attention.

Then, strange things start happening in the sisters’ lives. Iris sees a strange man “wearing a horned skull over his head” during her morning run. Then her eldest sister, Grey, disappears without a trace. When she and Vivi go to investigate, they discover a dead body in Grey’s apartment. And that’s not all.

House of Hollow is a breathless romp through a malevolent fairy tale world, but it is also a mystery (just what happened to these girls when they were younger) and a timeless tale of what sacrifices siblings might be willing to make for each other. The language is lush, the body horror just squicky enough and I had a great time reading it.

Seventeenth Summer – Maureen Daly

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Published in 1942, Seventeenth Summer was written while Maureen Daly was still in college. Although S.E. Hinton’s debut The Outsiders is often considered to be the first work of Young Adult fiction, a case can be made for Daly’s book as it has all the hallmarks of the genre.

Angie Morrow lives with her parents and sisters in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. As the summer begins, she locks eyes with Jack Duluth at McKnight’s, a drug store/soda bar, and thus begins a romantic summer.

I remember just how it was. I was standing by the drug counter waiting for the clerk. The sides of the booths in McKnight’s are rather high and in one, near the back, I could just see the top of someone’s head with a short crew cut sticking up. He must have been having a Coke, for he tore the wrapping off the end of his straws and blew in them so that the paper covering shot over the side of the booth. Then he stood up to see where it had landed. It was Jack. He looked over at me, smiled, and then sat down again.

Although Seventeenth Summer is tame by today’s standards, the young people in this book drink and smoke (pipes!) and make out, but there is something blissfully innocent about Angie’s account as she navigates her feelings for Jack, a handsome basketball player. Angie doesn’t think that’s she’s pretty enough or clever enough for Jack, but despite his initial swagger, Jack proves himself to be sweet and sincere.

Daly’s book is a sweet look at a time past, but it will surely resonate with anyone who has ever been young and in love.

Slow Dance – Rainbow Rowell

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Rainbow Rowell’s (Eleanor & Park) latest novel, Slow Dance tells the story of Cary and Shiloh, best friends since grade seven. The novel begins at the wedding of the third member of their little group, Mikey. Shiloh, now a divorced mom of two young children, is anxious and nervous about seeing Cary again; it’s been fourteen years since they’ve even talked to each other. And it would be one thing if their friendship had just drifted away, as friendships sometimes do. Things were slightly more complicated than that, though. so there are stakes inherent in this reunion.

Shiloh had been imagining this moment – the moment she’d see Cary again – for months, but even in her imagination, it wouldn’t mean as much to him as it did to her. Cary wouldn’t have been thinking about it all day. He wouldn’t have been wondering, worrying, that Shiloh might be here. He wouldn’t have bought a new dress, so to speak, just in case.

Slow Dance traces Shiloh and Cary’s relationship from its humble beginnings to the present day – including this reunion and its aftermath, but the story is not linear. We spend time with them (and Mikey) as they navigate high school, as Shiloh goes off to college and Cary to the navy. We learn their many quirks – Shiloh’s penchant for poking at Cary, the fact that whenever they go anywhere the three of them are always crammed into the front seat. Although Cary and Shiloh might not have admitted back in the day, Mikey knows that the two love each other and are just too chicken shit to admit it. So the slow dance of the title is just Shiloh and Cary slowly but surely – with all life’s obstacles and complications thrown into the mix – working their way back to each other.

Shiloh and Cary are both extremely quirky characters, but I actually really liked them both. Their insecurities prevent them from outing themselves to the other about their feelings. They are best friends, but they are also young when they realize that these romantic feelings probably aren’t going away. As a reader, you know exactly where these two are going to end up, but this is a book where the journey is more important than the destination.

I enjoyed the read.

Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things – Margie Fuston

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I was pretty sure Margie Fuston’s YA novel Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things would be right down my dark alley. First of all, she quotes Buffy the Vampire Slayer right out of the gate (crypt?) and anyone who knows me knows that Buffy and I are tight. I like vampires in general; they are my favourite fantasy creature (except for the sparkly ones).

Eighteen-year-old Victoria, the novel’s first person narrator, and her father have long-shared a love of vampires and have been planning a trip to New Orleans to try to find a real one because apparently they are real. About a decade ago a vampire proved his existence on national television for all the world to see, but then disappeared, and people have been looking for proof ever since.

Victoria’s dad won’t be going to New Orleans or anywhere for that matter because he has cancer and when the novel opens Victoria and her mother and sister learn that there is nothing more science can do for him. That’s when Victoria gets the crazy idea that she will travel to NOLA to find a vampire, convince him to turn her so that she can go home and turn her father so that he will live forever. As far as plans go it’s nuts, but we’ll park that.

Victoria doesn’t go alone. Her former best friend (and maybe something more if they hadn’t both freaked out a little) Henry tags along. Victoria has all the research done, so she at least has a plan and sooner than you can say Count Dracula, they have met Nicholas, who promises her eternal life if she completes a series of tasks designed to test whether she really wants to live forever.

Nicholas is enigmatic – and also hot – and Victoria risks her friendship (and maybe something more with Henry) by playing Nicholas’s game, but she is desperate to save her father. He’s her person.

There’s lots to like about this book. I loved the setting. New Orleans, famous haunt of vampires thanks, in part, to Anne Rice, is a place I have always wanted to visit. Vampires? Win win. For the me the problem is with Victoria herself. I get that she is trying to hold in all of her emotions; I understand the lengths she will go to to potentially save her father. I even forgive the wild emotional outbursts. But I often found her selfish and shrill and by the end she was really getting on my nerves. That said, I think anyone who has ever lost a loved one will totally feel the emotional punch in the gut this book offers.

Ultimately, Victoria learns Buffy’s most important lesson: “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live.” 

Twenty-Seven Minutes – Ashley Tate

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Canadian author Ashley Tate’s debut Twenty-seven Minutes begins with a horrific car accident in which teenager Phoebe Dean, who is “too young and too beautiful and too good to die”, dies. Her older brother Grant, was driving. Her friend, Becca, was in the back seat. They survived.

Ten years later, as Grant’s mother plans a memorial for the perfect daughter she lost, townsfolk are petitioning to have the bridge where the accident happened demolished. Not so much because of what happened to Phoebe but because of Rose Wilson, an elderly woman who has also had on accident on the bridge.

The memorial is stirring up a lot of drama in the town. Grant, who has always been troubled despite the fact that he was a big football star back in the day, is clearly imploding. He drinks, sleeps around and is clearly still grieving over the loss of his sister, but he comes across as an asshole more than as someone who can’t seem to shake off what happened that night.

There is also some sort of weird relationship between Grant and Becca. They have made some sort of agreement about what happened on the bridge the night Phoebe was killed and have also agreed not to talk about the status of their relationship.

June is also in mourning. On the night Phoebe died, her older brother, Wyatt, left home and never returned. Now June’s mother has died, leaving her all alone in the world until, miracle of miracles, Wyatt returns. He won’t tell her where he has been for the last decade, he just hints that all will be revealed.

The novel tracks multiple perspectives, each of them having a vested interest in what actually transpired on the bridge that night. This reveal is what we wait almost 300 pages for. 300 long pages of people shrieking at each other or saying the same thing over and over. It was not a fun time.

The title refers to the twenty-seven minutes between when the accident happens and when Grant actually calls for help. The reveal is both unbelievable and kind of ridiculous. The teenage versions of these characters sound exactly like their twenty-something selves and none of them are particularly likeable or sympathetic. I understand how people can get mired in grief, but this book was interminable and the ultimate payoff not worth the effort.

Not for me.